Definition of "topmast" [top•mast]

• The mast below the topgallant mast in a square-rigged ship and highest in a fore-and-aft-rigged 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.

• "A second moment they devoted to the wreckage of the same on deck -- the mizzen-topmast, thrust through the spanker and supported vertically by the stout canvas, thrashing back and forth with each thrash of the sail, the main - topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage."
• "There is no doubt that getting rid of the leverage of the bowsprit, right up in her eyes, eased her a good bit; and as the topmast was a pretty heavy spar, too, that also helped. ""
• "The month in which my seventeenth birthday arrived I signed on before the mast on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner bound on a seven-months 'seal-hunting cruise to the coast of Japan."