Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A canoe made from the trunk of a single tree hollowed out; a dugout: used by the American Indians.
  • noun A vessel made by sawing a large canoe in two in the middle, and inserting a plank to widen it.
  • noun A large flat-bottomed boat, without keel but-with lee-board, decked in at each end but open in the middle, propelled by oars, or by sails on two masts which could be struck.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See pirogue.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a dugout canoe
  • noun by extension, any small boat

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish piragua, in turn from the Carib for dugout.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "... a sort of large canoe, composed of the trunks of two trees, hollowed and united into one fabric; whereas canoes in general are formed of the body of one tree. The periagua is used in the Leeward Islands, South America, and in the Gulf of Mexico. Their masts and sails have a great resemblance to the proa, &c.

    "There are also double periguas used in Otaheite Tahiti, &c. which are constructed much longer and wider than that above-mentioned."

    Falconer's New Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1816), 341

    Alternate spelling of pirogue, perhaps.

    October 11, 2008