foresail
noun
foresail is a noun meaning “The lowest (and usually the largest) square sail hung on the foremast” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-R-E-S-A-I-L, and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of foresail is foresails.
What does foresail mean?
noun
- 1
The lowest (and usually the largest) square sail hung on the foremast
- 2
A square fore-and-aft sail set on the foremast, but behind it, on a schooner or other similar vessel.
- 3
A triangular sail set forward of the foremast: forestaysail.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce foresail?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-foresail.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of foresail
- foresails plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is foresail?
Foresail appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 165,739th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Foresail in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense lowest square sail on foremast:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | misaine |
| German | Fock |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does foresail come from?
From fore- + sail. Compare Dutch voorzeil, German Vorsegel, Danish forsejl, Swedish försegel.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).