furl

Perhaps from Old French ferlier, modern French ferler.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fɜːl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /fɝl/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)l

furl (third-person singular simple present furls, present participle furling, simple past and past participle furled)

1. (transitive) To lower, roll up and secure (something, such as a sail or flag)
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 14, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 71:

     With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

   • 1866, Charles Dickens, The Signal-Man‎:

     When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole.

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 191:

     "'Oh yes, that's all very well, but we haven't done with it yet,' said the lad, 'we shall have it worse directly,' and he ordered them to furl every rag but the mizen."

• unfurl