sheet anchor
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.87 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A source of help in times of danger; last resort.
Example Sentences
- "The Ship having thus depth of water again, and come into a place of some convenient anchourage, our first anchour not holding us, we let fall our sheet anchour […]"
- "By Noon the Sea went very high indeed, and our Ship rid Forecastle in, shipp’d several Seas, and we thought once or twice our Anchor had come home; upon which our Master order’d out the Sheet Anchor; so that we rode with two Anchors a-Head, and the Cables vered out to the better End."
- "1691, Ezekiel Hopkins, An Exposition of the Ten Commandments, with Other Sermons, London: Nathanael Ranew, “The Ninth Commandment,” p. 62, And doubtless when other Arguments have been baffled by a Temptation, this hath been a Sheet Anchor to the Soul, and hath often held it in the greatest Storms, when the Wind and Waves have beat most furiously against it."
- "“[…] If you are afeard of goblins, brother, put your trust in the Lord, and he’ll prove a sheet-anchor to you.”"
- "[…] you can imagine how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country where written contracts were worthless!—that main security, that sheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business."
- "[…] I had the joyful vision of myself far from home, from the familiar faces, from all my sheet-anchors, sitting on a milestone in the dark […]"
Etymology
Inflected Forms
sheet anchors (plural)
sheet-anchor (alternative)