Meanings
plural catboats
- A sailing boat with a single sail, usually rigged on a gaff spar, used for fishing in New England and later adapted for racing and cruising. It has a single mast set near to the bow and a long boom which may extend over the stern.
Men that I knew around Wapatomac didn't wear high, shiny plug hats, nor yeller spring overcoats, nor carry canes with ivory heads as big as a catboat's anchor, as you might say.
1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter X, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLCSynonyms: Una boat
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA sailing boat with a single sail, usually rigged on a gaff spar, used for fishing in New England and later adapted for racing and cruising. It has a single mast set near to the bow and a long boom which may extend over the stern.
Origin
- Irishcot
- Englishcatboat
According to Watkins, the first element is related to the animal cat and has correlations in Dutch kat (“vessel with wide fore and aft”), Medieval Latin gatus, gattus, Old French chat, a war machine or portable shed for protecting sapping operations, or a boat with such a shed, and Middle French chat (“kind of commercial vessel”). However, it could instead derive from Irish cot, coit; see cot (sense 3).
More words from Irish
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Catalan cat
- cattype of boat
German Catboot
- Catboottype of boat
Polish ket
- kettype of boat
Russian кэт
- кэт (kɛt)type of boat
Ukrainian кет
- кет (ket)type of boat
Cite this entry
catboat. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/catboat
“catboat.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/catboat. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “catboat,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/catboat.
Source: catboat on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.