dhow

noun

1. A traditional sailing vessel used along the coasts of Arabia, East Africa, and the Indian Ocean, generally having a single mast and a lateen sail.

   “I suppose I must have slept for seven or eight hours, getting the first real rest that I had had since the night before the loss of the dhow, for when I woke the sun was high in the heavens.”

   “Joshua continued preparing breakfast, Bijan returned to piloting the dhow offshore and Pourghasem returned to his watch.[…]Several dhows were on the water and some fishermen were already at work.”

   “The navy sometimes hired dhows for its patrols.[…]If a dhow was stopped, the slaves could not be counted on to make their presence known, having probably been told that the Europeans would kill them.”

   “They took a dhow from Mombasa bound for Aden and planned to take a larger vessel to Suez and then overland to Cairo.”

   “In contemporary Anglophone usage, the term ‘dhow’ has come to refer generically and exonymically to traditional wooden vessels of the western Indian Ocean, whatever their particular forms or emic classification.”