[SQUARE a.] a. A four-sided sail supported by a yard slung across the vessel. b. A flying sail set sail set on the fore-mast of a schooner or the mast of a sloop or cutter.
1600. E. Blount, trans. Conestaggio, 309. For which cause they shortned their yardes, prouiding square sailes.
1743. Bulkeley & Cummins, Voy. S. Seas, 117. As the Cutter was coming up to us, her square Sail splitted.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1780), s.v. Scudding, A ship … scuds with a sail extended on her fore-mast…. In sloops and schooners, and other small vessels, the sail employed for this purpose is called the square-sail.
1794. Rigging & Seamanship, 127. The cross-jack, or square-sail.
1846. McCulloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), I. 37. The barges which navigate the Severn … carry a square-sail, and have a mainmast and topmast.
1886. Encycl. Brit., XXI. 604/2. Square sails, those set upon such yards as have lifts and braces, regardless of their proportions.
attrib. 1794. Rigging & Seamanship, 162. The Square-sail-boom is lashed across the deck of vessels with one mast, to spread the foot of the square-sail.
1823. Crabb, Technol. Dict., II. s.v., A sloop’s or cutter’s sail, which hauls out to the lower yard, called the square-sail-yard.
1863. A. Young, Naut. Dict., 109. Cross-jack-yard … in a sloop or schooner also gets the name of the square sail yard. Ibid., 366. Square sail boom, a boom hooked on to an eye-bolt in the fore part of the foremast in any fore-and-aft-rigged vessel, for the purpose of booming out the square-sail, and setting the lower studding-sail.
