Meaning of thwart | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A seat across a boat on which a rower may sit.
2. A brace, perpendicular to the keel, that helps maintain the beam (“breadth”) of a marine vessel against external water pressure and that may serve to support the rail.
3. An act of thwarting; something which thwarts; a hindrance, an obstacle.
   rare

Equivalents

Examples

“The fisherman sat on the aft thwart to row.”

“When taking his seat in a boat, the learner should first observe that the thwart is firmly fixed, and that the mat upon it is securely tied to that part of it which is farthest from his rowlock.”

“Jane Porter had been the first of those in the lifeboat to awaken the morning after the wreck of the Lady Alice. The other members of the party were asleep upon the thwarts or huddled in cramped positions in the bottom of the boat.”

“A well-made dugout canoe rarely needs a thwart.”

“A conſiderable number of thwarts were laid from gunwale to gunwale, to which they were ſecurely laſhed on each ſide, as a ſtrengthening to the boat [a canoe].”

“My barge was sixty feet in length, and not more than twelve in the widest part; by taking away one thwart beam near the stern, laying a floor two feet below the gunwale, and raising an arched roof about seven feet above the floor, a commodious room was formed, fourteen feet long, and ten wide, with a closet behind it; […]”

“I looked down into the Old Town [a canoe]; there was no yoke, only a straight ash thwart.”

CEFR level