FRIGATE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Frigate

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/frˈɪgət/ Listen

noun

Frigate n.

Originally, a vessel of the Mediterranean propelled by sails and by oars. The French, about 1650, transferred the name to larger vessels, and by 1750 it had been appropriated for a class of war vessels intermediate between corvettes and ships of the line. Frigates, from about 1750 to 1850, had one full battery deck and, often, a spar deck with a lighter battery. They carried sometimes as many as fifty guns. After the application of steam to navigation steam frigates of largely increased size and power were built, and formed the main part of the navies of the world till about 1870, when the introduction of ironclads superseded them. (Formerly spelled frigat and friggot)

Any small vessel on the water. (Obs.)

Frigate bird (Zool.), a web-footed rapacious bird, of the genus Fregata; called also man-of-war bird, and frigate pelican. Two species are known; that of the Southern United States and West Indies is F. aquila. They are remarkable for their long wings and powerful flight. Their food consists of fish which they obtain by robbing gulls, terns, and other birds, of their prey. They are related to the pelicans.

Frigate mackerel (Zool.), an oceanic fish (Auxis Rochei) of little or no value as food, often very abundant off the coast of the United States.

Frigate pelican. (Zool.) Same as Frigate bird.

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Etymology of 'Frigate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Frigate" Quotes from Famous Books

... afterwards, when, as pilots, we were out at sea together one clear starlight night, did he tell me how his finger was lost. It happened at a time when the press gang were more than usually busy in Orkney pressing men for a frigate that lay in Stromness harbour. The blue jackets had had their eyes upon Jack Paterson, but Jack, who was just about to be married to Jean Nicol, did not intend being caught; and he said to Jean one day that rather than enter the navy, he would cut one of his fingers ...

— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... his Britannic Majesty's ships, supposed to be serving as part of the crew of the Chesapeake and enclosing a copy of an order from Vice-Admiral Berkeley requiring and directing the commanders of ships and vessels under his command, in case of meeting with the American frigate at sea, and without the limits of the United States, to show the order to her captain, and to require to search his ship for the deserters from certain ships therein named, and to proceed and search for them; and if a similar demand should be made by the American, he was permitted ...

— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End. The old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to her by every early ...

— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... Le Feu Follet, was published in 1842. The interest depends chiefly upon the manoeuvres by which a French privateer escapes capture by an English frigate. Some of its scenes are among Mr. Cooper's best, but altogether it is inferior to several of ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... report four days hence at Rochefort, on board the frigate "Conquest," which was lying in the roadstead waiting for two battalions of marines to be ...

— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

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