Definition of "kevel" []

• A sturdy belaying pin for the heavier cables of a ship. (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.

• "We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were in."
• "Mr. O'Neill, acting master's mate, was very severely injured by a hawser to which the schooner was fastened in tow, slipping on a kevel."
• "I crept out of the port into the chains and passed it round the lugger's main-mast, as he told me, handing in the bight to him, which he belayed slack to the main-sheet kevel."