Etymology From Middle English obaft, baft, baften, from Old English beæftan; be (“by”) (modern English by) + æftan (“behind”) (modern English after). See also aft.
1
Nautical, Transport Behind; toward the stern relative to some other object or position; aft of.
The captain stood abaft the wheelhouse.
[…] two drunken Turkes, that were in the Frigot with twelue others, discharged two Calieuers, with which they killed two Souldiours, that stood abaft our Gally.1620, Miguel de Cervantes, chapter 63, in Thomas Shelton, transl., The Second Part of the History of the Valorous and Witty Knight-Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha, London: Edward Blount, page 432:
3 more examples
1773, James Cook, An Account of a Voyage Around the World, Book 3, Chapter 5, in John Hawkesworth (ed.), An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty: for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, Volume 3, p. 558, […] we could hear the water rush in a little abaft the foremast, about three feet from the keel: this determined me to clear the hold intirely.
“[…] Read the sign up there—NO SMOKING ABAFT THE WHEEL!”1869, Mark Twain, chapter 3, in The Innocents Abroad, Hartford: The American Publishing Company, page 35:
The bulkhead that separates ladies’ country from the rough characters who shave is not necessarily No. 30 but, by tradition, it is called “bulkhead thirty” in any mixed ship. […] Male officers had a lounge called the cardroom just abaft thirty.1959, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 13, in Starship Troopers, New York: Ace, published 2010, page 260:
abaft
adv
Etymology From Middle English obaft, baft, baften, from Old English beæftan; be (“by”) (modern English by) + æftan (“behind”) (modern English after). See also aft.
The Exchange also being farther from the fire, afterward was more easily cleared, and fell off from abaft.1599, Nicholas Downton, “The firing and sinking of the stout and warrelike Carack called Las Cinque Llaguas”, in Richard Hakluyt, editor, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, London, Volume 2, Part 2, p. 200:
By clapping the sails to the mast, and lightening the ship abaft, we swayed her off with little damage.1785, John Rickman, Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage, London: E. Newbery, Part 1, p. 103:
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from the Captain’s round-house abaft;1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “'”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 452:
We cover our anterior nakedness with some philosophy—Christian, Marxian, Freudo-Physicalist—but abaft we remain uncovered, at the mercy of the winds of circumstance.1954, Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, New York: Perennial, published 1970, page 72: