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Talk Like a Sailor 9 Fascinating Nautical Terms
Assistant Professor
Ilahia School of Management Studies
Kerala, India.
Prepared by
Manu Melwin Joy
Phone – 9744551114
Mail – [email protected]
Scuttlebutt
• Most of us know the termscuttlebutt as a folksy way torefer to rumor or gossip, but innautical nomenclature, ascuttlebutt is an open cask ofdrinking water or a drinkingfountain. The former definitionevolved out of the nauticalsense, as sailors would engagein idle chat while gatheredaround their version of theoffice water cooler.
Moonraker• In sailing, a moonraker is a light
square sail set at the top of themast. But this term is also ademonym for people fromWiltshire, England. As the storygoes, a few men from Wiltshirewere discovered trying to rakethe moon's reflection out of apond. However, if you ask aWiltshire native, he or she mighttell you another version of thestory: the men were raking apond for kegs of smuggledbrandy, and when authoritiesappeared, the rakers feignedmadness.
Landlubber
• If the phrases "fly thespinnaker" and "douse the jib"strike you as Jabberwocky, youmight be a landlubber. Thisterm refers an unseasonedsailor or someone unfamiliarwith the sea. The secondelement of this compound,lubber, has been used invarious constructs throughoutthe years, most notably abbey-lubber, referring to a lazymonk, and Lubberland, animaginary land of laziness.
Sea dog
• The opposite of alandlubber might be calleda sea dog, defined as "asailor, especially an old orexperienced one." The termcan also refer to a pirate, aharbor seal, or a luminousappearance near thehorizon, such as meteor,regarded by mariners as anomen of bad weather.
Fathom
• Most of us know fathom as averb, meaning "to penetrate tothe truth of" or comprehend. Butthe sea dogs out there know thata fathom is also a unit of length,used primarily in nauticalmeasurements, equal to six feet.This length is an approximation ofthe length of outstretched arms,which brings us to the Old Englishword meaning "span ofoutstretched arms." The verbsense comes from Old Englishmeaning "to embrace, surround,envelop."
Chockablock
• This fun-to-say adjectivemeans "extremely full" or"jammed," as in "This park ischockablock with puppies."But if those puppies are on aboat, you might want to findanother term to describe thestate of canine crowding. In anautical context, chockablockmeans "having the blocksdrawn close together, as whenthe tackle is hauled to theutmost."
Flotsam
• Flotsam is a legal term thatrefers to wreckage of a shipand its cargo found floating onthe water. It's often used inconjunction with jetsam,another word from maritimelaw that refers to goods castoverboard deliberately whichsink or wash ashore. Thephrase flotsam and jetsam isoften used to refer to uselessor unimportant items or oddsand ends.
Groggy
• The term groggy means dazedand weakened or intoxicated,the way one might feel afterhe or she partakes in a gobletfull of its root word grog,which is a mixture of rum andwater. The term grog is areference to a British admiralwho ordered his sailors' rum tobe diluted; he was nicknamedOld Grog because he wore agrogram cloak.
Bumpkin
• In sailing, a bumpkin is abeam or spar projectingoutward from the hull of avessel. Outside of a nauticalcontext, it refers to anawkward, simple rustic oryokel. The Dutch wordboomken, which means"little tree," may bridge thegap between the twomeanings as it appears tohave been used to refer to ashort stumpy man.
