Crossword clues for pirogue
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1660s, from French pirogue, probably from Galibi (a Carib language) piragua "a dug-out." Compare Spanish piragua (1530s).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A canoe of shallow draft, made by hollowing a log. 2 A small flat-bottom boat of shallow draft. Specifically, a flat-bottom boat made of one four-feet by eight-feet piece of plywood, the bottom being a two-feet eight-inches wide eight-feet long pointed-ends lengthwise-centered oval cut from the piece, and the boat's sides being comprised of the two remaining pieces attached lengthwise to the outside edges of the oval. 3 A style of pasta shaped as a miniature canoe folded over.
WordNet
n. a canoe made by hollowing out and shaping a large log [syn: dugout canoe, dugout]
Wikipedia
A pirogue (or piragua or piraga) can be one of several kinds of small boats. One kind is associated particularly with the Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh. The early Cajun pirogues were cypress dugouts but today they are usually flat-bottomed boats. Pirogues are not usually intended for overnight travel but are light and small enough to be easily taken onto land. The design also allows the pirogue to move through the very shallow water of marshes and be easily turned over to drain any water that may get into the boat. A pirogue has "hard chines" which means that instead of a smooth curve from the gunwales to the keel, there is often a flat bottom which meets the plane of the side. The pirogue is usually propelled by paddles that have one blade (as opposed to a kayak paddle, which has two). It can also be punted with a push pole in shallow water. Small sails can also be employed. Outboard motors are increasingly being used in many regions. In West Africa they were used as traditional fishing boats.
Usage examples of "pirogue".
It was slave-stealer country, smuggler country, and as they worked their way by pirogue down Bayou des Familles to Little Barataria Bayou, and from there through the low mazes of the marshlands, January and Natchez Jim took turns sleeping, and never let their hands be far from their completely illegal guns.
Devil Island was giving rise to much gossip, as the marble tile for the floors was now being ferried through the swamps by slow motorless pirogue and people were asking over their coffee cups in Ruby River City and Mapleville whether or not Tarquin Blackwood had lost his mind.
On the other side of the desert we came to a swamp, great sucky grasses tufted into a green scum, we abandoned the Land-Rover for a pirogue, and with one of my companions paddling in the bow and the other poling in the stern and me in the middle set off across the dank whining surface, giant cypresses gnarling and snarling all about us and two-inch-high tree monkeys hanging by one arm like evil fruits therefrom.
While Tibor drove the pirogue steadily toward the nearside shore, he sat in the stern and leafed through the book he had risked his life to save.
He spoke of Timbuctoo, the gate of the Sahara and the Western Soudan, the frontier town where life ended and met and mingled, whither the camel of the desert brought the weapons and merchandise of Europe as well as salt, that indispensable commodity, and where the pirogues of the Niger landed the precious ivory, the surface gold, the ostrich feathers, the gum, the crops, all the wealth of the fruitful valley.
Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed.
Shadowspots has found a place where barefoot men pulled canoes or pirogues ashore on a little riverine beach and had themselves a meal of raw fish and a raw moccasin, leaving behind bones from the snake but not the head.
Dozens of pirogues, huge hollowed-out hardwood trees, bobbed and weaved in the current.
The Indians inform that the Yellowstone River is navigable for pirogues and canoes nearly to its source in the Rocky Mountains, and that in its course, near these mountains, it passes within less than half a day's march of a navigable part of the Missouri.
We therefore took as much of the meat as our canoes and pirogues could conveniently carry.
We find great difficulty in getting the pirogue and canoes up in safety.
I had ordered them to bring down the horses to this place in order to assist them in collecting meat, which I directed them to kill and dry here for our voyage, presuming that they would have arrived with the pirogue and canoes at this place several days before my return.
Captain Lewis, 28 July 1806 I arose early this morning and had the pirogue and canoes loaded and set out at half after 6 A.
At this place I found a good beach for the purpose of drawing out the pirogue and one of the canoes, which wanted corking and repairing.
I directed the pirogue and canoes to come to at this place, and found it to be the camp of two hunters from the Illinois, by name Joseph Dickson and Forest Hancock.