It's also pretty cool that a ton of sailing vocabulary has made its way into common English vernacular. I guess with the UK being the most powerful country in the world at one time (and projecting their power via their Navy) it's not too surprising.
What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.
There are some we use in tech every day. The word log (as in logbook/log file) comes from a literal log that was thrown overboard to estimate the speed of the ship for navigation.
After that, there's some fun slang that's nautical. Chockablock comes from the blocks (pulleys) getting jammed on each other when multiple ropes are being worked on. "Not enough room to swing a cat" refers to the Cat o' Nine Tails which was a whip used for punishment on board ships.
Of course, I'm not even including the influx from containerisation! Helm, tiller, etc. etc.
Chockablock is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for! These days abbreviated to just 'chocka', at least if my mum is anything to go by. Thanks for your reply
Leeway: The "lee" is the area downwind of a vessel. A lee-shore is a shoreline that the wind blows on to, as opposed to a windward shore that the wind blows off. To give leeway is to allow enough room for a vessel to be blown off course by the wind and avoid danger.
Rig (noun): The mast and supporting stays on a boat. (oil rigs, "big rig" come from this I think).
Rig (verb): To put the sails up and tie on the sheets and other lines that control sails. ("Let's rig this up." == "Let's set this up.")
Posh (my favourite, though I doubt it's actually true): Port Out Starboard Home. When travelling from England to India around the tip of Africa, it was favourable to have a cabin on the port side on the way to India and starboard on the way back as it would be in the shade most of the time and a little cooler in the sun, with a view of the land.
See also: Change tack / try a different tack, right the ship, stay the course, (to be) swamped, "At a rate of knots" (very fast), keep an even keel, keel over.
I too doubt the posh etymology: If you’re sailing around the cape by definition you will have crossed the equator twice, meaning your calculation of the sun positions will change. Acronyms pronounces as words seem more a modern 20th century thing.
Wiktionary talks about posh coming from the Romani language, meaning half, in monetary terms, as in half a crown. Seems believable to me, a lot of modern terms come from traveller’s languages and argots and such. See also tory and whig.
Swedish (also picking a lot from German, of course) has the same word ("lä", and no I'm not going to try to describe the pronunciation) but our usage is wider in scope. In Swedish lä is simply "out of the wind", and not restricted to use onboard a vessel. Cool, didn't know that about English.
One I like is the phrase "the tell-tale signs", which refers to a sailing boat's tell-tales. These are small strings attached to the sails to indicate if the sail needs to be trimmed for optimal performance.
>also tell-tale, "discloser of secrets," 1540s, from tell (v.) + tale. As an adjective from 1590s. Phrase tell a tale "relate a false or exaggerated story" is from late 13c.
Is it maybe that the nautical term comes from plain English?
Quite a lot of folk etymology tries to, incorrectly, assign nautical origins to common words and phrases. I used to read a column by an etymologist that jokingly referred to this using the term CANOE - the Committee to Assign a Nautical Origin to Everything :-)
Have a read (or listen to the brilliantly read audiobook) of Master and Commander, and the subsequent series of novels by Patrick O'Brien. Apart from being entertaining historical novels, you learn a lot about naval life and terminology. Reading them I am struck by just how much nautical lingo made its way into common English usage.
Having read the _excellent_ series in English, it was amusing for me to see the movie in a Danish cinema, where the incomprehensible English maritime jargon was translated to incomprehensible Danish maritime jargon.
I'd also recommend watching The Terror (season 1) and play Return of the Obra Dinn. Though both contain fantasy elements, there's lots of nautical lore to be found.
I'm not sure that is true, sure the tacking angle of old boat was nowhere close to modern boats, but I would be surprised if they couldnt sail up wind.
You never sail at 0 degrees upwind. When going upwind, the angle is about 30 degrees minimum. Closer than that and you can't inflate the main sail, thus get no power.
30 degrees should be enough to prevent toxic hazards. Sitting on the head on a tilting ship, during upwind sailing, is prone to other hazards though.
To go upwind you need a keel (viking ships did) or something that prevents the wind to push the ship away [1]. Sailing against the wind was very important for battle ships. What we have now compared to them is better materials and centuries of improved design which turned into tacking closer to the wind and much better maneuverability. We can change direction in a very short space. However our sailing boats are much smaller, closer to the viking ships than to the galleons [2]
It's interesting that farming/agriculture and sailing both have left the legacy of their words into the language. It goes to show how important these industries are to civilization.
3 sheets to the wind — meaning drunk — comes from sailing. A sheet is a rope used to control a sail. Sheets that are “to the wind” are loose (rather than tied down) so a ship with 3 sheets to the wind is going to be completely out of control and at the mercy of the wind, wandering all over the sea like a drunk person!
A truly huge number of nautical terms have entered normal parlance. Some are so deeply engrained that we don't even realize they were originally nautical metaphors. Examples:
* Taken aback
* Above board
* Adrift or at sea
* Afloat versus underwater
* Ahead
* All hands
* Anchored
* Awash
* Batten down the hatches
* Bitter end
* Boiler room
* Buoyed up
* By and large
I stopped after B. Also, "cut of your jib", of course.
In Malaysian/Singaporean English there's a term: gostan (read "go stun"), which means to reverse. I was curious about it's etymology and went to research it. It came from "go astern", with "astern" being the back of a ship. I imagine this must be a phrase the English speaking colonists must have used quite a lot in the 17th century
To add to the list, strike (as in to refuse to work as a protest). In nautical terminology, to "strike" something is to lower it- sailors demanding better conditions or higher pay would lower their ship's sails and refuse to go to sea.
"at the helm" seems like common usage to me. Maybe not in the top 100 idioms, but everyone knows what you mean.
"tiller" is just the thing that controls the position of the rudder, which I think most people know about. (That said, nobody in aviation calls their rudder pedals the "tiller", so it might be a strictly nautical term.)
Yup, you're exactly right. I totally forgot about that. Thinking about it more, the rudder and tiller might be different things on ships too; I think a rudder you turn right to go right, and a tiller you turn left to go right, because of where the pivot point is?
On a boat the rudder is technically the blade that cuts through the water and the tiller is the thing that gives you enough leverage to apply force to control the direction of the rudder as it passes through the water; sometimes quite a lot of force is needed! Only quite small boats have tillers that you can directly manipulate. Larger boats typically have a wheel which controls hydraulic rams which manipulate the ‘tiller’
I hear people use "at the helm" and "change tack" to mean being in charge of something and changing direction or approach, respectively. People also "hitch themselves" to things, although I'm not sure that comes directly from the nautical usage.
A "hitch" knot is typically used to fasten around a fixed object. So you might use a hitch to tie the boat to the shore, or tie a line around a wooden (or these days aluminium or carbon fibre) boom. I'm not sure if it's purely nautical.
Boats are noisy and dangerous places at times, I wonder if the lexicon arose organically or intentionally on the ability to hear them clearly to avoid misunderstanding. Any pirates care to comment?
