"Sailman" wrote

BOLT ROPE.

BOLT-ROPE, (ralingue, Fr.) a rope to which the edges or skirts of the
sails are sewed, to strengthen and prevent them from rending. Those
parts of the bolt-rope, which are on the perpendicular or sloping
edges, are called leech-ropes; that at the bottom, the foot-rope; and
that on the top or upper-edge, the head-rope. Stay-sails, whose heads
are formed like an acute angle, have no head-rope. To different parts
of the bolt-rope are fastened all the ropes employed to contract or
dilate the sails.

That's a pretty neat description, unfortunately it has nothing to do with
the use of lines on a boat or ship. Materials that a sailmaker uses in
construction that help to form a finished product and no longer functions in
any way as an individual component are not examples of which we speak.
Nonetheless it was a real landlubber who edited that dictionary and
described "contracting and dilating" the sails, with other ropes no less.
Figures it's a French word, lol. America owes its final victory for
independence to assistance from French warships, so we're bound to leave the
frogs alone on this one. But if there are some Brit's in the group,I'll bet
they could expose the French Navy for what they always were to Britain:
Target practice. Gilbert & Sullivan had to apologize to France when their
musical had a French Warship striking her colors to an unarmed British
merchant. Probably happened on a few occasions too ;-)

JP