Definition of "hawse" []

• The part of a ship where the hawseholes are located. (noun)
• A hawsehole. (noun)
• The space between the bows and anchors of an anchored ship. (noun)
• The arrangement of a ship's anchor cables when both starboard and port anchors are secured. (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.

• "These memories dealt with a remote time, when a hawse was a hawse, and you couldn't have it put all over you by a lot of slick young smarties that could do a few things with a monkey wrench."
• "When I knocked the shackle-bolt loose, the chain roared out through the hawse-hole and into the sea."
• "Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams, burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions - forward, astern, to right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail."