tafferel

From Dutch tafereel (“panel, picture”), diminutive of tafel (“table”), from Latin tabula (“table”).

tafferel (plural tafferels)

1. A carved panel.
2. (nautical) The flat upper part of a ship's stern above the transom, often decorated with carvings.
3. (nautical) The taffrail.
   • 1837, Edmund Roberts, chapter XVIII, in Embassy to the eastern courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat in the U. S. sloop-of-war Peacock, David Geisinger, Commander, during the years 1832-3-4, New York: Harper & Brothers, page 272:

     A true Chinese junk is a great curiosity; the model must have been taken originally from a bread-trough, being broad and square at both ends—when light, (I speak of a large one,) it is full thirty feet from the surface of the water to the tafferel, or the highest part of the poop.

   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter XVIII, in Walden‎, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, published 1910, pages 422–3:

     Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum.