Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. (context nautical of the orientation of the sails of a ship English) parallel with the keel, that is, going from bow to stern (as opposed to square-rigged). alt. (context nautical of the orientation of the sails of a ship English) parallel with the keel, that is, going from bow to stern (as opposed to square-rigged).
WordNet
adj. parallel with the keel of a ship
Usage examples of "fore-and-aft".
Cape Bowhead in the middle of the night should chance to see us looming faintly in the darkness, he will take us for some little fore-and-aft affair of no consequence.
She could fly three foresails, or jibs, two huge gaffed fore-and-aft sails on her fore and mainmasts, and when at any point of sail from a close reach to running be- fore the wind could also add two smaller topsails on crossed yards.
That was the wide thwartships area where you could move them sideways as well as fore-and-aft.
Nereide, Otter, the brig Grappler which they had retaken at St Paul's, and a couple of fore-and-aft rigged avisoes, from the same source: to leeward the Windham Indiaman, with parties from each ship repairing the damage caused by the blow and the violence of the enemy, watched by the philosophical French prize-crew.
Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in deck and deckhead, ran the whole fore-and-aft length of the hold.
Topped by a deer-stalking fore-and-aft cap in an inferior state of preservation, he wore the jacket of a lounge-suit, once possible, doubtless, but now demoded, and a blazered golfing waistcoat, striking for its poisonous greens, trousers from an outing suit that I myself had discarded after it came to me, and boots of an entirely shocking character.
It had a single mast, very tall, with a fore-and-aft rig, a balloon jib sail, and a slightly raised bridge with a wheel.
The Hadji was about-forty feet long and essentially consisted of two sharp-prowed bamboo hulls fastened together with a platform, a bowsprit with a balloon sail and a single mast, fore-and-aft rigged, with sails of woven bamboo fibers.
Phaedra seemed to be sailing as close to the wind as she dared, so that her braced yards and bulging sails appeared to be almost fore-and-aft, thrusting her over, the sea boiling around her gunports and deluging the bare-backed seamen until their canned bodies shone like crude statuary.
It filled the upper square sails, lower fore-and-aft canvas, and jibs that drove Firefish southeast.
He was dressed in jacket and breeches of white linen, the little peaked fore-and-aft cap of his region, and a sash which nearly concealed the pepperpot pistol and pearl-handled gravity knife he preferred.
But I also want to sail close to the wind, and for that we must have bigger fore-and-afts.
He wore a version of classic Emerald war gear, bronze breastplate cinched with a scarlet sash, long single-edged sword, bronze helmet with a flaunting scarlet plume running fore-and-aft like a cocks comb, kilt of leather strips.
Shanty villages had been built on stilts over the mudbanks and silty channels left by the river's retreat, and beyond these, sometimes less than half a league from the road, sometimes two or three leagues distant, was the river, and docks made of floating pontoons, and a constant traffic of little cockleshell sailboats and barges and sleek fore-and-aft rigged cutters and three-masted xebecs hugging the shore.