windlass

plural windlasses · alternative obsolete windless

1. Any of various forms of winch, in which a rope or cable is wound around a cylinder, used for lifting heavy weights.
2. A winding and circuitous way; a roundabout course.

   With windlasses and with assays of bias, / By indirections find directions out.

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], line 65

3. An apparatus resembling a winch or windlass, for bending the bow of an arblast, or crossbow.

present singular third person windlasses · participle present windlassing · participle past windlassed · past windlassed · alternative obsolete windless

1. To raise with, or as if with, a windlass; to use a windlass.

   A favoring breeze enabled us to sail all the way down the lake, and (having been windlassed across the haul-over) even down the canals.

   1882, Constance Gordon-Cumming, “Ningpo and the Buddhist Temples”, in The Century Magazine

2. To take a roundabout course; to work warily or by indirect means.

   1 more example

   He could not expect to allure him forward, and therefore drives him as far back as he can; that so he may be the more sure of him at the rebound; as a skilful woodsman, that by windlassing presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have obtained.

   a. 1660, Henry Hammond, a sermon