furl

present singular third person furls · participle present furling · participle past furled · past furled

1. transitiveTo lower, roll up and secure (something, such as a sail or flag)

   When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole.

   1866, Charles Dickens, The Signal-Man

   2 more examples

   With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 14, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 71

   "'Oh yes, that's all very well, but we haven't done with it yet,' said the lad, 'we shall have it worse directly,' and he ordered them to furl every rag but the mizen."

   1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 191