Meaning

noun a sailboat with a single mast set far forward

originAccording to Watkins, the first element is related to the animal cat and has correlations in Dutch kat (“vessel with wide fore and aft”), Medieval Latin gatus, gattus, Old French chat, a war machine or portable shed for protecting sapping operations, or a boat with such a shed, and Middle French chat (“kind of commercial vessel”). However, it could instead derive from Irish cot, coit; see cot…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0