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say it: KAP-stuhn
capstan is a noun meaning "a windlass rotated in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis; used on ships for weighing anchor or raising heavy sails". It is pronounced /ˈkæpstən/ — KAP-stuhn. It carries one recorded sense.
a windlass rotated in a horizontal plane around a vertical axis; used on ships for weighing anchor or raising heavy sails
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for capstan come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.