from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Schooner \Schoon"er\, n. [See the Note below. Cf. {Shun}.]
(Naut.)
Originally, a small, sharp-built vessel, with two masts and
fore-and-aft rig. Sometimes it carried square topsails on one
or both masts and was called a {topsail schooner}. About
1840, longer vessels with three masts, fore-and-aft rigged,
came into use, and since that time vessels with four masts
and even with six masts, so rigged, are built. Schooners with
more than two masts are designated three-masted schooners,
four-masted schooners, etc. See Illustration in Appendix.
[1913 Webster]
Note: The first schooner ever constructed is said to have
been built in Gloucester, Massachusetts, about the year
1713, by a Captain Andrew Robinson, and to have
received its name from the following trivial
circumstance: When the vessel went off the stocks into
the water, a bystander cried out,"O, how she scoons!"
Robinson replied, " A scooner let her be;" and, from
that time, vessels thus masted and rigged have gone by
this name. The word scoon is popularly used in some
parts of New England to denote the act of making stones
skip along the surface of water. The Scottish scon
means the same thing. Both words are probably allied to
the Icel. skunda, skynda, to make haste, hurry, AS.
scunian to avoid, shun, Prov. E. scun. In the New
England records, the word appears to have been
originally written scooner. Babson, in his "History of
Gloucester," gives the following extract from a letter
written in that place Sept. 25, 1721, by Dr. Moses
Prince, brother of the Rev. Thomas Prince, the annalist
of New England: "This gentleman (Captain Robinson) was
first contriver of schooners, and built the first of
that sort about eight years since."
[1913 Webster]