Also 7 cattamaran, 8 catamoran, kattamaran, 9 catamarran. [ad. Tamil kaṭṭa-maram tied tree or wood (kaṭṭa tie, bond; maram wood.]
1. A kind of raft or float, consisting of two, three or more logs tied together side by side, the middle one being longer than the others; used in the East Indies, especially on the Coromandel coast, for communication with the shore. Also applied to similar craft used in the West Indies for short voyages, and to others of much larger size used off the coast of South America; as well as to a kind of raft made of two boats fastened together side by side, used on the St. Lawrence and its tributaries.
1697. Dampier, Voy., I. vi. 143. The smaller sort of Bark-logs … are more governable than the other…. This sort of Floats are used in many places both in the East and West Indies. On the coast of Coromandel … they call them Catamarans. These are but one Log, or two, sometimes of a sort of light Wood … so small, that they carry but one Man, whose legs and breech are always in the Water.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 24 (Y.). Coasting along some Cattamarans made after us.
1779. Forrest, Voy. N. Guinea, 263. Rafts of bamboo, like the catamarans on the coast of Coromandel.
1794. Rigging & Seamanship, I. 242. Balsas, or Catamaran, a raft made of the trunks of the balsa … lashed together, and used by the Indians … in South America. The largest have 9 trunks of 70 or 80 feet in length, are from 20 to 24 feet wide, and from 20 to 25 tons burthen.
1804. A. Duncan, Mariner’s Chron., III. 112. We saw two of the catamarans … coming towards us, with three black men on each.
1834. Caunter, Orient. Ann., i. 4. The catamaran … is generally about ten feet long by eighteen inches broad.
1876. Times, 25 Oct., 9/4 (D.). The fan of her screw propeller came in contact with a floating catamaran.
b. attrib.
1883. Fisheries Exhib. Catal., 47. Tumble overboard Life-raft. Reversible Catamaran principle.
† 2. Applied to a kind of fire-ship or instrument of naval warfare resembling the modern torpedo; esp. to those prepared in 1804 to resist Napoleon’s intended invasion of England. Obs.
1804. Chron., in Ann. Reg., 419/2. This undertaking commonly known by the appellation of the Catamaran expedition.
1809. Naval Chron., XXII. 453. The explosion of a catamaran.
1882. Allardyce, in Athenæum, 26 Aug., 268/2. He experimented with Fulton’s ‘catamarans’—the prototypes of the modern fish torpedoes—against the Boulogne flotilla.
fig. 1822. Byron, in Moore, Life, V. 319. If you have any political catamarans to explode, this is your place.
1832. Blackw. Mag., XXXI. 480/2. He is, in truth, the very catamaran of oratory, and when he explodes, he must be a bold man that can say he has either body or soul.
3. Applied to a cross-grained or quarrelsome person, esp. a woman. colloq. [? Associated with cat.]
1833. Marryat, P. Simple, vi. The cursed drunken old catamaran.
1848. Lytton, Harold, iv. 168. To dress that catamaran in mail.
1868. M. Collins, Anne Page, II. 223. That old catamaran of a maiden aunt of his.
