Chiefly Naut. [Etymology unknown. Some have compared Da. bundt, Sw. bunt a bundle (which seem to be merely a. Ger. bund).] gen. A swelling, a pouch- or bag-shaped part of a net, sail, etc.
1. The cavity or bagging part of a fishing-net; also of a napkin or the like when folded or tied so as to form a bag; the funnel or bottom of an eel-trap.
1602. Carew, Cornwall, 30 a. The Weare is a frith … hauing in it a bunt or cod.
a. 1648. Digby, Closet Open. (1677), 216. That the whey may run … through the bunt of the napkin.
1861. Couch, Brit. Fishes, II. 73. The sean for Mackarel is nine fathoms in depth at the middle or bunt.
1880. J. W. Milner, in Harper’s Mag., LX. 852/1. As the bunt of the seine nears the shore, silence prevails.
1883. Fisheries Exhib. Catal., 367. Apparatus … to be fixed at the end of the bunt of an Eel Trap.
2. ‘The middle part of a sail, formed designedly into a bag or cavity, that the sail may gather more wind. In “handed” or “furled” sails, the bunt is the middle gathering which is tossed up on the centre of the yard’ (Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk.). b. The middle part of a yard: the Slings.
c. 1582. Cotton MS. App., xlvii. (Halliw.). Flying fyshes to break ther noses agaynst the bunt of the sayle.
1611. Cotgr., Bourser,… to bunt, or leaue a bunt in a sayle.
1627. [see BUNTLINE].
1678–96. Phillips, Bunt, the hollowness which is allowed in making of Sails. Ibid. (1706), Bunt, (Sea-term) the Bag, Pouch, or middle Part of a Sail, which serves to catch and keep the wind; as The Bunt holds much Leeward Wind, i. e. the Bunt hangs too much to the Leeward.
1794. Rigging & Seamanship, I. 86. Bunt, the middle-part of the foot of square sails, and the foremost leech of staysails cut with a nock.
1881. Clark Russell, Ocean Free-Lance, II. ii. 31. The bunt of the top-gallant sail.
1882. Nares, Seamanship (ed. 6), 10. Slings or Bunt, the middle of a yard where the rigging is placed.
3. Comb., as bunt-gasket, -whip; bunt-jigger, ‘a small gun-tackle purchase … used in large vessels for bowsing up the bunt of a sail when furling’ (Sailor’s Word-bk.). Also BUNTLINE.
c. 1860. H. Stuart, Seaman’s Catech., 18. Bunt lines, bowlines, and bunt jiggers. Ibid., 46. The sail loosers … overhaul the buntlines and bunt whip.
b. Bunt fair, adv. phr.: ‘Before the wind’ (Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk.).
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, II. i. Spooming with a full Sail, bunt fair before the Wind.
