The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cutwater \Cut"wa`ter\ (k[u^]t"w[add]`t[~e]r), n. (Naut.)
The fore part of a ship's prow, which cuts the water.
A starling or other structure attached to the pier of a bridge, with an angle or edge directed up stream, in order better to resist the action of water, ice, etc.; the sharpened upper end of the pier itself.
(Zo["o]l.) A sea bird of the Atlantic ( Rhynchops nigra); -- called also black skimmer, scissorsbill, and razorbill. See Skimmer.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context nautical English) The forward curve of the stem of a ship 2 The wedge of a bridge pier, that resists the flow of water and ice. 3 A black skimmer; a sea bird of the species ''Rynchops niger'', that flies low over the sea, "cutting" the water surface with its lower mandible to catch small fish.
Usage examples of "cutwater".
Straight on towards us came the toiling ship, the dip of oars resonant in the hollow fog and a ripple babbling on her cutwater plainly discernible.
He hoisted himself onto the cutwater, and by the bowsprit arrived at the forecastle.
The boat tapered to a sharp cutwater at the prow, which extended forward.
Froth curled around the cutwater, drawing eddies in the patch of surface Ilna could see through the scuttle.
He poked into every accessible part of the ship, from cutwater to counter, from keelson to pantry shelves.
Her prow threw rooster tails every time the sharp cutwater plowed into a swell, twin spouts jetting up over the forecastle from the hawseholes where the anchor chains ran down through the deck.
What seemed the upper quadrant of a slowly turning and very thick wheel was the curving back of a dolphin, and always good for a yell, and sometimes a dozen or so of them would play games with the ship, racing to cut across the bow from side to side and so close that it seemed the cutwater must hit them.
By noon he was so out of sorts that he retreated to his place by the cutwater, hoping to be left alone.
From the stump of her jibboom and her cutwater great beards of rime and marine growths hung downward into the scum that held her in.
By noon he was so out of sorts that heretreated to his place by the cutwater, hoping to beleft alone.
Second, when the prow of the nearer pirate lifted from a wave with a geyser of foam and a cheer from her complement, Perennius could see that the cutwaters were extended below the shallow hull by a true keel.
From sheer cutwater to transom stern she measured twenty-eight feet, and fourteen feet of beam at the widest point, a third back from the bows.