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Gaff   /gæf/   Listen
Gaff

noun
1.
A sharp metal spike or spur that is fastened to the leg of a gamecock.
2.
A spar rising aft from a mast to support the head of a quadrilateral fore-and-aft sail.
3.
An iron hook with a handle; used for landing large fish.



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"Gaff" Quotes from Famous Books



... waiting and longing for the sport, rods, reels, gaff, creel—everything was in readiness for a ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... is at the same time creating new places for capable men. It cannot help but do so. This does not mean that new openings come every day and in groups. Not at all. They come only after hard work; it is the fellow who can stand the gaff of routine and still keep himself alive and alert who finally gets into direction. It is not sensational brilliance that one seeks in business, but sound, substantial dependability. Big enterprises of necessity move slowly and cautiously. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... time he came up for re-election, a lot of Character-Assassins tried to shell-road him and hand him the Gaff and ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... ear, and than which none accords so well with the hoarser murmur of the brawling stream; till at last, after many an alternate hope and fear, the glittering prize turns up his silvery unresisting broadside, in meek submission to the merciless gaff. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... zounds, they'll bring the whole country down upon them. Na, na! when I was in that way I played at giff-gaff with the officers: here a cargo taen—vera weel, that was their luck; there another carried clean through, that was mine; na, na! hawks ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sail with the pressure of the wind on it. But Frank Racer had considerable skill in handling boats, and with his brother at the helm, to ease off when he gave the word, he managed to cast off the throat and peak lines, lower the gaff and sail, and then take a ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... model of a fishing dory that Georgie made for me, with its sprit-sail and killick and painter and oars and gaff all cleverly cut with the clumsiest of jackknives. I care a great deal for the little boat; and I gave him a better knife before I came away, to remember me by; but I am afraid its shininess and trig shape may have seemed a trifle unmanly to him. His father's had been sharpened ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... went under. [Footnote: Do.] But in spite of the rough weather, the firing was not only spirited but well directed. At 11.36 the Wasp's maintop-mast was shot away and fell, with its yard, across the port fore and foretop-sail braces, rendering the head yards unmanageable; at 11.46 the gaff and mizzentop-gallant mast came down, and by 11.52 every brace and most of the rigging was shot away. [Footnote: Capt. Jones' letter.] It would now have been very difficult to brace any of the yards. But meanwhile the Frolic suffered dreadfully in her hull and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... in her hull and rigging, from the fire of the castle at Volo, and the battery at Tricheri. She lost her jib-boom, main-topmast, gaff, and larboard cat-head, and received much other damage; so that it was necessary to proceed to Poros to give her a thorough repair. On her way, she was fortunate enough to capture four vessels laden with stores and provisions for the Turks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... yourself," retorted Joe. "I don't care the value of a ship's biscuit for your dream—yours nor anybody else's—so stow your gaff. Close your peepers, and let me get a few winks, if I can, always providing as I'm ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... a long beat back. As they got away from the land, the wind increased very much, and came in strong sharp cold gusts which made it necessary first to take in the gaff-topsails, and then one reef and then another in the mainsails. As the wind increased the sea got up, and the little vessels, more suited to fine weather than foul, had hard work to look up to the rising ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... Francesco could sail rings round our old brigantine, even in a stiff breeze, for the cutter drew as much water as we did, and had a big spread of canvas. By nightfall we were running before a lusty south-east breeze, the cutter keeping about half a mile to windward of us, and taking in her gaff topsail, when it became dark, otherwise she would have run ahead of, and lost us before morning. At daylight, when I went on deck, she was within a cable's length, Yorke was steering—smoking as usual—and no one else was visible ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke

... another, while the volatile audience called out excitedly in Spanish, "The black wins—No, the speckled one's ahead. Holy Virgin, give strength to the black!" In a very few moments one cock is either dead, or perhaps turned coward before the cruel gaff of his opponent, and victor and vanquished leave the arena to new combatants, while the clink of coin changing hands is ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... nothing to do with cowardice. He had gone for a route march and had returned a dusty lump of fatigue. But after having shaken the dust out of his moustache—Doggie had a playful turn of phrase now and then—and drunk a quart of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained hard, and they were all but washed out of the huts. It was a very strange life—one which he never dreamed could have existed. "Fancy me," he wrote, "glad to sleep on a drenched bed!" There was the riding-school. Why hadn't he learned to ride as a boy? ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... Committees fightin' to git 'im on their staffs—an' all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done at Gueldersdorp, an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do? an' thank you kindly, Mister!—an'——" W. Keyse could only suppose that Mrs. Keyse was playing a bit of gaff on hers truly—"and him with a wife, too! Married an' 'appy, an' goin' to be 'appier yet!" He pointed to the little red snub nose peeping between the folds of the flannel. "When a little nipper like ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... be said or done, except to hunt for another fly in the trout fly-book. Here there was no such thing, but a local spectator offered me a huge fly, more like a gaff, and equipped with a large iron eye for attaching the gut to. Withal I suspect this weapon was meant, not for fair fishing, but for "sniggling." Now "sniggling" is a form of cold-blooded poaching. In the open ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... mainsail, and those already named, the schooner, for so we must call her, carried two heavy, but graceful topsails upon her fore and mainmasts, and even a jigger sail or spanker and gaff above it, on a slender spur rigged from the quarter deck. Altogether the schooner with her various appurtenances, resembled such a yacht as some of the English noblemen sail in the channel and about the Isle of ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... weed, and sulk. Ours set his head towards the sea, and sailed down the length of the pool in the open water without attempting any more plunges. As his strength failed, he turned heavily on his back, and allowed himself to be drawn to the shore. The gaff [Footnote: Gaff: a large hook fixed on the end of a pole or handle.] was in his side and he was ours. He was larger than we had guessed him. Clean run he would have weighed twenty-five pounds. The fresh water had reduced him to twenty-two, but without softening his muscle ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... everybody's slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the end of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the hateful voice, "'Ere, you, 'Ump, no sodgerin'. I've ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by the fall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dress when I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by the assistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook for landing large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, put into a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, which were familiar to him, I soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness. ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... in these later years much to con over in my mind, I know that he is right. But it is no occupation for a fuming man, and as I marched up and down I forgot all about my cork, till, with a short laugh that had the tail of a curse in it, I noted that a real gaff was a silly weapon with which to cut down an imaginary Highlander, and turned again to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... in the world—that little man: the essence of Cockney wit; and he does not know how good he is. He thinks that she is much better than he can ever hope to be, and she thinks so, too; but if it were not for him, MacDermott, she wouldn't get thirty shillings a week in a penny gaff!" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... and every available foot of space was occupied with it. The deck-house was all but hidden. The mainmast dragged by a tangle of ropes aft of the starboard beam and was acting as a sort of sea-anchor. For the rest, her lumber-piled deck was swept clean save for a splintered gaff that had become wedged in the boards. Her hull had been painted black, but not very recently, and a dingy white streak led ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... end. The mast was braced with stay ropes stretched from the top to the forward end of the backbone and to the ends of the crosspiece. A 9-foot pole, tapering from 1-1/2 inches to 1 inch in diameter, was used for the boom of the mainsail, and for the gaff we used a 6-foot pole of ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... speed she had had, and it was double drudgery regaining the forgotten lore. But she stood the gaff and found herself on the dizzy height of graduation from a lowly business school. She had traveled a long way from the snobbery ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... and at the end of that time he found that he was bailing almost constantly. There was only one thing to do under the circumstances. The gaff lay under his hand. This is a piece of broom-handle, to the end of which a stout, sharp hook is attached, and the instrument is used in landing fish which are too heavy to swing inboard on the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... since vanished as structures," he commented. "Only steel and concrete have stood the gaff of uncounted years! Where all that fashion, wealth and beauty once would have scorned to notice us, girl, now what's left? Hear the cry of that gull? The barking of that fox? See that green flicker over the pinnacle? Some new, bright bird, never dreamed of in this country! ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... third mile that the battle of wits and judgment had to be carried to conclusion, the fourth mile lurking as a mere matter of staying power and ability to stand the gaff. Deacon's idea was that at present his crew was leading because Shelburne was not unwilling for the present that this should be. How true this was became evident after the two-mile flags had passed, when the Shelburne oarsmen began to lay to their strokes with ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... put in Joey sharply, noting the look in the boy's pale face. "Don't talk like that. 'E's not used to that sort o' gaff. Let me ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... alow and aloft. Only the tricolour at the enemy's fore flapped insolently; and the red-cross flag, at the mizzen gaff of the sloop, licked out a long tongue and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... was broken. "I may as well give up now as later. If anything can be saved out of the wreck—my wreck—go to it! Shoot, kid! Tell the worst! I'll stand the gaff!" ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... sat on the parapet a beautiful emerald fish some four feet long came sailing beneath my feet in the yellowish water; a little boy shouted with glee, and a brown naked boatman tried to gaff it, then a brilliant butterfly, velvet black and blue, fluttered through the little fleet; and with the colours of the draperies, of peaceful but piratical looking men, the lateen sails, and sunlight and heat, it all felt "truly Oriental." To bring in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... white all right," assented Joe warmly. He recalled an occasion when a muff by a luckless center-fielder had lost a World Series and fifty thousand dollars for the team, and yet McRae had "stood the gaff" and never said a word, because he knew the man was trying ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... proprietor of these learned quartos would appear to claim his own, carried them down to the bridge, where Meg and her sister were already deep in the mysteries of frothing tubs and boiling pots. Winsome from the broomy ridge could hear the shrill "giff-gaff" [give and take] of their colloquy. She sat down under Ralph's very broom bush, and absently turned over the leaves of the note-book, catching ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... slide in grooves. Next, with chisel, spoke-shave, and sand-paper, I prepared the mast and fitted a top-mast to it, and secured it in its place with shrouds and stays of fine, waxed fishing-line. The boom and gaff were then put in place, and Fanny Wrigley (who had aforetime made my pasteboard armor and helmet) now made me a main-sail, top-sail, and jib out of the most delicate linen, beautifully hemmed, and a tiny American flag to hoist to the peak. It only remained to paint her; ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... holds like this till to-morrow, we'll be in port by noon," said Haco Barepoles to Gaff as they stood near the wheel, holding on to the backstays, and turning their backs to the seas that swept heavily over the side from time ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... a small gaff-topsail schooner, the General Morazan, armed with a brass eight-pounder and carrying a mixed crew of forty-four men, French, Italian, English, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... girl a lot about the way a man looks at his job. 'If I take up the cards I can't be a quitter,' he said. 'It would hurt my record. And my record is the equivalent of credit and capital. I can't afford to have any weak spots in it. I'll take the gaff rather than have it said about me that I've lain down on a job. I'm going on with this thing to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... detail, however, of the dinghy while he lay on the deck of the "Petite Jeanne"; how the runner fitted to the mast; whether the halliards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves or were knotted and would jamb. He knew the weight of the gaff and the great tan-soddened sail to a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought, on the Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. He had never looked for thick weather at this time of year off the Banks, so near ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... comin' on deck i' the morning! I'll bet a week's grog the chap's desarted from the king's flag, mates! Well, ye know, hereupon I couldn't do no less nor shove in my oar, so I takes word from all hands not to blow the gaff,[A] an' then gives 'em the whole yarn to the very day, about the Green Hand—for somehow or another, I was always a yarning sort of a customer. As soon as they heard it was a love consarn, not a man but swore to keep a stopper on his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... sordid, selfish, cowardly." She fancied she heard Mormon Joe saying it, and herself expressing her disbelief in the statement. "There are few persons strong enough to stand the gaff of public opinion." She had contradicted him, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... the close of the last century, in very old ships, there was no sail hung on this lower yard of the mizzenmast, it having been introduced only for setting the mizzen topsail; and instead of the gaff spanker we now have there was a huge lateen sail which extended some distance forward of the mast and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... looked for the missile in the hollow of the sail foot. Nothing there. But following the canvas upward, he detected a clean slit in the cloth and passed under the boom to follow his clue. Then, by the rail in the coil of the main-gaff-topsail-halliards, he saw something glitter ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... before the wind, and balloon foresails, thereby greatly adding to their speed in light winds. One peculiarity of the bawleys is that, when at anchor, the mainsail, instead of being stowed with its spars parallel to the deck, is made up on its gaff, which is then hoisted with the throat seven or eight feet up the mast, while the peak ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Gaff" :   rig, fishing rig, fishing tackle, sailing ship, spike, spar, fishing gear, hook, sailing vessel, tackle



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