topsail

IPA: tˈɑpsˈeɪɫ

(nautical) A sail or either of the two sails rigged just above the course sail and supported by the topmast on a square-rigged sailing ship.
(nautical) In a fore-and-aft-rigged sailing boat, the sail that is set above the gaff at the top part of the mast.
A neighbourhood of Conception Bay South, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Examples of "topsail" in Sentences

We took in topsail and staysail, dropped the main peak, and as we got abreast of the principal wharf jibed the mainsail.
We took in topsail and staysail, dropped the main-peak, and as we got abreast of the principal wharf jibed the mainsail.
And on one side, and one side only, the wall had fallen away till it was like the slope of the decks in a topsail breeze.
Her topsail was the only canvas she had set, and she was so low in the water that I could not see her deck amidships at that distance.
Her main topsail blew out suddenly and went streaming forth in the gale, a jib split to ribbons before their eyes, and spar after spar was carried away.
You know what it is to lay out on a topsail yard in the thick of it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen canvas till you're ready to just let go and cry like a baby.
Thus a few minutes of the voyage were lost by backing the Elsinore's main-topsail and deadening her way while the service was read and O'Sullivan was slid overboard with the inevitable sack of coal at his feet.
The lower-topsail, its sheets parted by the fall of the crojack-yard, was tearing out of the bolt-ropes and ribboning away to leeward and making such an uproar that they might well expect its yard to carry away.
By saving money, by earning more, and by each of us foregoing a bicycle on his birthday, we had collected the purchase price of the Mist, a beamy twenty-eight-footer, sloop-rigged, with baby topsail and centerboard.