crosstree
nounEtymology From cross + tree.
1
Nautical, Transport A light timber or metal spreader fixed athwartships part way up a mast to spread the shrouds from higher up
- Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant crosstrees.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 35”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- She was wearing the Red Ensign at her cross-trees and the Stars and Stripes aft and she was making about three knots through the twenty-foot opening of the reef.1954, Ian Fleming, “Beau Desert”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 197: