squilgee

plural squilgees · alternative squillage · alternative squillagee · alternative squillgee · alternative squill-gee

1. historicalnauticalA tool in the form of a mop or swab, or a blade with a long handle, used for cleaning and/or drying a vessel's deck; a type of squeegee.

   A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: […] Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “A Squeeze of the Hand”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 466

   1 more example

   After the holy-stone, comes the squill-gee; a wooden instrument like a hoe, but with a face, broad and flat, and lined with leather: the decks are partly dried with it; and the operation is completed by the swabs, articles formed by tying a number of loose yarns together, now dashed, by their handles, with violence about the deck.

   1829, George Jones, Sketches of Naval Life, with Notices of Men, Manners and Scenery, on the Shores of the Mediterranean, in a Series of Letters from the Brandwine and Constitution Frigates, volume 1, page 97

present singular third person squilgees · participle present squilgeeing · participle past squilgeed · past squilgeed

1. alsofigurativelytransitivenauticalSynonym of squeegee (“to use a (squilgee or) squeegee on (something, such as a surface)”).

   Synonyms: squeegee