from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun A small distinguishing flag displayed by a yacht.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun Nautical, a swallow-tailed flag or pendant: in the merchant service it generally has the ship's name upon it.
noun A kind of small coal used for burning in engine-furnaces.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A kind of small coat.
noun (Naut.) A swallow-tailed flag; a distinguishing pennant, used by cutters, yachts, and merchant vessels.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A broadtaperingpennant, often with a swallowtail, flown by merchant ships to identify the vessel and by yachts to identify the yacht club, as well as being the form of the flag of the State of Ohio. (See also, Flag of Ohio).
noun A kind of small coal used in furnaces.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Perhaps from French dialectal bourgeais, shipowner, from Old French burgeis, citizen, from bourg, bourg; see bourg.]
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Examples
"Yes, my dear Squaretoes; but we don't call a burgee a flag aboard ships."
Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal Hand-scrimshawed burgee buckle For the Salty Dog This hand-scrimshawed burgee buckle jibes well with a canvas belt, salt-faded chinos and a simple pique polo.
You can get race news (on the Kiwi crew member who lost a finger, for example), updated photos of the beach from the "San Diego Bay-Cam" and a glossary for finding out the difference between a gennaker and a burgee.
Now, as she came up into the harbour, she could pass without question for a man-o'-war brig except that she flew the Royal Yacht Squadron burgee instead of a commission pendant.
An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new.
Now, our man held aloft a stick with the houseboat's burgee on it, and a photograph was taken that we might not forget where our diverted road came out and where to go to meet the "friggetts" that might be coming in almost any time.
chained_bear commented on the word burgee
"'...a first-class commodore, Stephen, with a broad swallow-tailed burgee, a captain under me and a pennant-lieutenant...'"
--P. O'Brian, The Commodore, 18
March 16, 2008
qms commented on the word burgee
May each dreaming sailor’s keen urge be
To break from the dock and to surge free
With wind at her back
From tack after tack
Her hair streaming out like a burgee.
October 12, 2018