Definition of "xebec" []

• A small three-masted Mediterranean vessel with both square and lateen sails. (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.

• "He was the master of a small three-masted vessel called a xebec, armed for privateering, the _San Antonio_, manned by Ivizans, engaged in constant strife with the galliots of the Algerian Moors and with the ships of England, the enemy of Spain."
• "Yet all such speed was invisible, as the wind vanishes when a swift xebec scuds before a tempest on the Ocean of Urth. We drifted so lazily that if I had not had faith in Apheta and the Hierarchs, I would have feared we would never reach the ship at all and be lost forever in that endless night."
• "She was a xebec and looked handy enough -- I have always been lucky in my ships."