felucca

[ fuh-luhk-uh, -loo-kuh ]

noun
  1. a sailing vessel, lateen-rigged on two masts, used in the Mediterranean Sea and along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts.

  2. a small fishing boat formerly used in the San Francisco Bay area.

Origin of felucca

1
1620–30; earlier falluca<Spanish faluca, earlier variant of falúa, perhaps <Catalan faluga<Arabic falūwah small cargo ship

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use felucca in a sentence

  • "And José Medina owns two hundred motor-feluccas and employs eighteen thousand men," answered Hillyard.

    The Summons | A.E.W. Mason
  • Just as they had sighted the land they fell in with three piratical feluccas, either one of which was a match for the Active.

  • Lateen-rigged feluccas, with white sails set, are wafted to and fro by the gentle breeze.

    Glories of Spain | Charles W. Wood
  • There were galleys and caravels, barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas.

  • Far off in the summer haze picturesque feluccas, with their white lateen sails, glided to and fro with slow dream-like motion.

    The Shadow of the Czar | John R. Carling

British Dictionary definitions for felucca

felucca

/ (fɛˈlʌkə) /


noun
  1. a narrow lateen-rigged vessel of the Mediterranean

Origin of felucca

1
C17: from Italian felucca, probably from obsolete Spanish faluca, probably from Arabic fulūk ships, from Greek epholkion small boat, from ephelkein to tow

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012