razee
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From French vaisseau rasé, from raser (“to rase, to cut down ships”). See raze and rase (verbs).
Noun[edit]
razee (plural razees)
- (nautical) An armed ship with its upper deck cut away, and thus reduced to the next inferior rate, such as a seventy-four cut down to a frigate.
- 1838, Edmund Fanning, Voyages to the South Seas […] :
- an old line-of-battle ship, (21 years of age,) cut down to a razee
Verb[edit]
razee (third-person singular simple present razees, present participle razeeing, simple past and past participle razeed)
- (transitive, nautical) To cut (a ship) down to a smaller number of decks, and thus to an inferior rate or class.
- (transitive, figurative) To trim or abridge by cutting off parts.
- to razee a book, or an article
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 36”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"
References[edit]
- “razee”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.