Obs. Also 6–7 -ette, trinquet, 7 trinchet. [Identical with (and prob. a.) F. trinquet (15–16th c. in Hatz.-Darm.) a foremast, also its sail; in Cotgr. 1611, ‘properly the top or top-gallant on any mast’; in mod.F. dictionaries ‘the foremast in a lateen-rigged vessel.’ According to Hatz.-Darm., ad. It. trinchetto ‘a small saile called a trinket’ (Florio), the ‘fore-sail’ (Baretti); = Sp. trinquete ‘the foremast, the fore saile’ (Percival); Cat. triquete, Pg. traquete (Jal). Cf. also F. trinquette (15–16th c.), ‘a triangular sail, a kind of lateen sail’ (Littré), a fore-stay sail, a storm-jib; so Sp. trinquetilla. If the original application was to a sail, the meaning may have been a three-cornered sail, from L. triquetrus; but Jal takes the name as primarily designating a mast. See Diez, Littré, Jal.] A kind of sail; esp. the triangular sail before the mast, in a lateen-rigged vessel.
In Holland’s Livy it represents L. dolon, which Isidore (XIX. iii. 3) defines as ‘minimum velum et ad proram defixum.’
1555. Eden, Decades, 195. They … sayle with twoo sayles as with the master sayle and the trinkette.
1596. Thomas, Lat. Dict. (1606), Dolo, a small saile in a ship called a Trinket.
1600. Holland, Livy, XXXVI. xliv. 943 b. Hee set up the trinkets [L. dolones] or small sailes, meaning to make way into the deepe.
1648. Hexham, Dutch Dict., Focke, ofte Focke-zeyl, a small saile at the prow of a ship, called a Trinket.
1658. Earl Monm., trans. Paruta’s Wars Cyprus, 63. That they might keep company, they used only the Trinchet. Ibid., 134. The Turkish gallies sayled … with their Trinchet-sayl onely, very close together.
1697. Potter, Antiq. Greece, III. xvi. (1715), 134. Δόλων, the Trinket, or small Sail in the Fore-deck.
b. See quots., and cf. Cotgr. cited in etymology above. (Perh. an error.)
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Trinquet … is properly the top or top-gallant on any mast, the highest saile of a ship.
So 1707. in Glossographia Anglicana Nova.
