Meaning & use
mast
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Meanings
nouncountable
A tall upright pole on a ship or boat that holds up the sails, flags or equipment.
Grammar: Often described by position: the main mast, the front mast.
Patterns
- the mast of a ship
- at the top of the mast
A flag flew from the top of the mast.
The sailor climbed the mast to fix a rope.
The storm snapped the boat's mast in two.
nouncountableBritish
A tall tower or pole that carries radio, television or phone signals.
Grammar: Common in British English: a phone mast, a radio mast.
Patterns
- a radio mast
- a mast for something
A new phone mast was built on the hill.
The TV mast could be seen for miles.
Engineers repaired the radio mast after the storm.
nouncountable
A flagpole.
Grammar: Usually in the phrase flag mast, or half-mast when a flag is lowered in mourning.
Patterns
- fly a flag at half-mast
The flags were flown at half-mast for a week.
A single flag hung from the mast outside the town hall.
Students raised the school flag up the mast.
Word forms
| plural | masts |
|---|
Common combinations
- main mast
- The captain stood below the main mast.
- half-mast
- The flag was flown at half-mast.
- ship's mast
- The ship's mast rose high above the deck.
- mast and sail
- The boat had one mast and a single sail.
- before the mast
- He spent two years sailing before the mast.
- phone mast
- Residents protested the new phone mast.
Synonyms and how they differ
- pole
- Pole is a general word for any long upright piece of wood or metal, while mast is for ships and signal towers.
- spar
- Spar is a sailing term for any pole supporting sails, including horizontal ones, and is broader than mast.
- tower
- Tower suggests a large, wide structure, whereas a mast is slender and often held by cables.
- flagpole
- Flagpole is exclusively for flags, while a ship's mast has other jobs as well.
Word family
- mainmast noun
- the principal mast of a sailing ship
- foremast noun
- the mast nearest the front of a ship
- mizzenmast noun
- the mast behind the main mast
- masthead noun
- the top of a mast, or the newspaper title area
- three-masted adjective
- having three masts
Commonly confused: mast or must? mast or mass?
mast vs must
Must is a modal verb meaning have to; it is easy to mistype for mast, but the vowel and meaning differ.
mast vs mass
Mass means a large amount or the amount of matter in something, and is spelled and pronounced differently from mast.
Practice
What does a sailor mean by 'the mast'?
Choose one answer.
The mast is the upright pole on a ship that supports the sails. The other options are different parts of a vessel.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mast”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.