(n.) The upper edge of a vessel's or boat's side; the uppermost wale of a ship (not including the bulwarks); or that piece of timber which reaches on either side from the quarter-deck to the forecastle, being the uppermost bend, which finishes the upper works of the hull.
Example Sentences:
(1) Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.
(2) Put to bed images of retirees shuffling about in deck shoes though: these boats were stuffed to the gunwales with 21 to 35-year-olds, drinking, partying and the aforementioned kamikaze plunging off the top deck.
Washboard
Definition:
(n.) A fluted, or ribbed, board on which clothes are rubbed in washing them.
(n.) A board running round, and serving as a facing for, the walls of a room, next to the floor; a mopboard.
(n.) A broad, thin plank, fixed along the gunwale of boat to keep the sea from breaking inboard; also, a plank on the sill of a lower deck port, for the same purpose; -- called also wasteboard.
Example Sentences:
(1) His target customer: Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard stomachs who look like they're about to jump on a surfboard.
(2) Venturing west, you might have stumbled across Lucy's Retired Surfers Bar, where New Orleans's dapper Luke Winslow-King and the washboard-wielding Esther Rose got the crawfish-munching masses jitterbugging to their vintage sweaty Southern stomp.
(3) My first gig in school was a skiffle group – a couple of guitars, washboard, tea-chest bass – but I'd already been doing gigs before that, youth club gigs.