Definition of "brigantine" [brig•an•tine]

• A two-masted sailing ship, square-rigged on the foremast and having a fore-and-aft mainsail with square main topsails. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But I found out that the vessel was not exactly a ship after all, but a sort of half schooner, half brig, -- what they call a brigantine, having two masts, a mainmast and a foremast."
• "In a later chapter an attempt has been made to place before the reader pictures of the galley, the galeasse, and the nef, which were the names attached to the ships then in use; the name brigantine, far from having the significance attached to it by the sailor of the present day, seems to have been a generic term to denote any craft not included in the names already given."
• "Wreck exposed by Cyclone Yasi identified A SHIPWRECK exposed when Cyclone Yasi hit north Queensland has been identified as the brigantine Belle, lost in 1880."