Frigate
['frɪgət] or ['frɪɡət]
Definition
(noun.) a United States warship larger than a destroyer and smaller than a cruiser.
(noun.) a medium size square-rigged warship of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Inputed by Jesse--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) Originally, a vessel of the Mediterranean propelled by sails and by oars. The French, about 1650, transferred the name to larger vessels, and by 1750 it had been appropriated for a class of war vessels intermediate between corvettes and ships of the line. Frigates, from about 1750 to 1850, had one full battery deck and, often, a spar deck with a lighter battery. They carried sometimes as many as fifty guns. After the application of steam to navigation steam frigates of largely increased size and power were built, and formed the main part of the navies of the world till about 1870, when the introduction of ironclads superseded them.
(n.) Any small vessel on the water.
Edited by Babbage
Definition
n. in the Royal Navy formerly a vessel in the class next to ships of the line carrying 28 to 60 guns on the maindeck and a raised quarter-deck and forecastle—not now denoting a distinct class of vessels.—ns. Frig′ate-bird a large tropical sea-bird with very long wings; Frigatoon′ a small Venetian vessel with square stern and two masts.
Edited by Faye
Examples
- A more extensive test--seven hundred hectoliters, of which six hundred and fifty had been pasteurized--was carried out on the frigate la Sibylle with sat isfactory results. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
- The modern cruiser may be regarded as the offspring of the frigate of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- He went aboard a British frigate, the _Bellerophon_, asking to be received as a refugee, but being treated as a prisoner. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- He sought to blow up the British frigate Eagle with the aid of a torpedo and nearly succeeded in doing so, seriously scaring the British shippers by the explosion of his torpedo. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- In the frigate-bird, the deeply scooped membrane between the toes shows that structure has begun to change. Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Typist: Patricia