Port, n.
 1. A place where ships may ride secure from storms; a sheltered inlet, bay, or cove; a harbor; a haven. Used also figuratively.
    Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads.   --Shak.
    We are in port if we have Thee.   --Keble.
 2. In law and commercial usage, a harbor where vessels are admitted to discharge and receive cargoes, from whence they depart and where they finish their voyages.
 Free port. See under Free.
 Port bar. Naut, (a) A boom. See Boom, 4, also Bar, 3. (b) A bar, as of sand, at the mouth of, or in, a port.
 Port charges Com., charges, as wharfage, etc., to which a ship or its cargo is subjected in a harbor.
 Port of entry, a harbor where a customhouse is established for the legal entry of merchandise.
 Port toll Law, a payment made for the privilege of bringing goods into port.
 Port warden, the officer in charge of a port; a harbor master.


 Port n.
 1. A passageway; an opening or entrance to an inclosed place; a gate; a door; a portal. [Archaic]
 Him I accuse
 The city ports by this hath entered.   --Shak.
 Form their ivory port the cherubim
 Forth issuing.   --Milton.
 2. Naut. An opening in the side of a vessel; an embrasure through which cannon may be discharged; a porthole; also, the shutters which close such an opening.
    Her ports being within sixteen inches of the water.   --Sir W. Raleigh.
 3. Mach. A passageway in a machine, through which a fluid, as steam, water, etc., may pass, as from a valve to the interior of the cylinder of a steam engine; an opening in a valve seat, or valve face.
 Air port, Bridle port, etc. See under Air, Bridle, etc.
 Port bar Naut., a bar to secure the ports of a ship in a gale.
 Port lid Naut., a lid or hanging for closing the portholes of a vessel.
 Steam port, ∧ Exhaust port Steam Engine, the ports of the cylinder communicating with the valve or valves, for the entrance or exit of the steam, respectively.