halyard

• halliard

Compare lanyard.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhæljə(ɹ)d/, /ˈhæljɑː(ɹ)d/

halyard (plural halyards)

1. (nautical) A rope used to raise or lower a sail, flag, spar or yard.
   • 1922, John Dos Passos, “A Novelist of Revolution”, in Rosinante to the Road Again, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

     […] broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and halyards,—men who feared only God and the sea-spirits of their strange mythology and were a law unto themselves, adventurers and bigots.

   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]

• main halyard
• throat halyard