halyard

noun

Etymology: Inherited from Middle English halier, from halen (“to haul”) + -iere (“-er”), with misconstrual of -ier as yard. Compare lanyard.

1. A rope used to raise or lower a sail, flag, spar or yard.

   “At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water […]”

   “[…]broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and halyards,—men who feared only God and the sea-spirits of their strange mythology and were a law unto themselves, adventurers and bigots.”

2. A rope used to extend a ladder.