WHARF • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Wharf

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/wɔrf/ /hwɔrf/ Listen

noun

Wharf n. (pl. wharfs or wharves)

A structure or platform of timber, masonry, iron, earth, or other material, built on the shore of a harbor, river, canal, or the like, and usually extending from the shore to deep water, so that vessels may lie close alongside to receive and discharge cargo, passengers, etc.; a quay; a pier. "Commerce pushes its wharves into the sea." "Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame." Note: The plural of this word is generally written wharves in the United States, and wharfs in England; but many recent English writers use wharves.

The bank of a river, or the shore of the sea. (Obs.) "The fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf."

Wharf boat, a kind of boat moored at the bank of a river, and used for a wharf, in places where the height of the water is so variable that a fixed wharf would be useless. (U. S.)

Wharf rat. (Zool.)

(a)

The common brown rat.

(b)

A neglected boy who lives around the wharfs. (Slang)

verb

Wharf v. t. (past & past part. wharfed; pres. part. wharfing)

To guard or secure by a firm wall of timber or stone constructed like a wharf; to furnish with a wharf or wharfs.

To place upon a wharf; to bring to a wharf.

See images of 'Wharf'

Etymology of 'Wharf'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wharf" Quotes from Famous Books

... Miss Heathcote, the men 'round here are shucks, and I'm keeping my eye open for the real interest of King's Forest, not the sentimental interest. Now, that Point—we ought to clean that up, build decent, comfortable cottages there and a wharf; keep the men as have ambition and can pay rents, and get others in, foreigners if you like, who know their business and can set a good example. We're all running to seed down here, Miss Heathcote, and that's a fact. I don't mind telling you, you're a woman of a thousand ...

— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... face away, and then added dreamily, "a long time, a very long time ago, and met some fairly decent people. And I no more believe that Mr. de Vere comes from a good family than I do that Nathaniel Burrowes, a low, broken-down New Orleans wharf-loafer, comes from one of the 'first families in Virginia' that American newspapers are always blathering about" "What is wrong with him, Mr. Blount?" "Nothing from your point of view—everything from mine. And, so far as I am concerned, I don't mean to have anything to do with these two ...

— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke

... constructed it chiefly with their stone and bone axes and other tools, having only one or two axes or tools of European manufacture. Everything around this beautiful spot wore an aspect of peace and plenty; and as we dropped our anchor within a stone's cast of the substantial coral wharf, I could not avoid contrasting it with the wretched village of Emo, where I had witnessed so many frightful scenes. When the teacher afterwards told me that the people of this tribe had become converts only a year previous to our arrival, and ...

— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... be Cooper's Creek, a little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the creek, and arrived there about eight or nine o'clock on the Sunday morning, and landed at the Market Street wharf. ...

— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... him to the upper deck on a dark night and send him unshriven to his account by way of the lee rail; but as none of us knew enough Italian to tell him the needful falsehood that scheme of justice came to nothing, as did all the others. At the wharf in New York we parted from Madame more in sorrow than in anger, and from her conquering cavalier with polite manifestations of the contempt we ...

— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

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