barque

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a sailing ship with three or more masts, square-rigged except on the rearmost mast

   The British barque crossed the Atlantic under a full spread of sail.

2. 2
   noun

   literary or archaic: a sailing vessel or boat of any kind

   The poem imagines a lonely barque moving across a silver sea.

Simplified etymology

Barque, also spelled bark, is an old-fashioned word for a boat. It entered English in the Middle English period from Latin barca, meaning “ship’s boat,” and is unrelated to a dog’s bark or the bark of a tree.

From Middle English barke, borrowed through French barque from Italian barca or Medieval Latin barca, ultimately from Greek baris, 'an Egyptian boat.' It is a doublet of bark and is related through the same history to barge.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary