What's poopy about a poop deck? | NAUTICAL ETYMOLOGY
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- Опубликовано: 13 май 2024
- Welcome, me hearties, to another episode of Words Unravelled. In this edition, Rob and Jess discuss nautical terms and pirate slang.
💩 What's so poopy about a poop deck?
🏴☠️ What does it mean to "shiver" someone's timbers?
⚓️ Which English idioms come from the high seas?
Find out in Words Unravelled!
👂LISTEN: podfollow.com/words-unravelle...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Video about nautical idioms that Rob mentioned: • 8 Sailing Expressions ...
Rob's RUclips channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymology.com/
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
#etymology #pirates #English
Rob here! Two things:
1) I suggested the poop deck was at the bow of the ship. It's at the stern.
2) I keep saying "boat" when naval types will point out it should be "ship".
Apologies. Three strikes, and I be walking the plank.
Funnily enough, the crew would stick their booties over the bow to poop into the sea. No connection at all to the poopdeck, or any toilet paper sheets to the wind, but a fun fact 😂
@@AhoyGame Good tip for the next time I'm on the Channel ferry.
R
Getting "pooped" on an old ship was to have a wave from a following sea crash onto the poop deck and sometimes flood the ship...
In French there's a similar word: poupe referring to the back of the ship. The front is called the proue.
@@steeveletur1983 English "prow".
Every time Rob says boat when he means ship hundreds of sailors are shouting at the screen!
Ahem, slang.
I think that's standard talk for sailors. I even once heard a naval officer refer to a sub as a boat😂
a ship needs 3 masts... else it's a boat.
@@wilsonfamily1762 No, else it is a brig, brigantine, bark/barque, barkentine/barquentine, schooner, et cetera, et cetera. Incidentally, a ship must also be square-rigged.
In modern parlance, a ship is a large commercial or military vessel. The term "ship" no more applies to a square rigger, in this day and age, than "frigate" or "sloop" do.
@@docclabo6350 A ship is at least 24 meters of length. However a U-boat is always a boat.
The POOP DECK is the deck at the STERN of the ship. The deck in the front is the fo'castle (Fore Castle) the elevated portion of the deck at the bow.
Hilarious watching Rob blush as he explained the current meaning of "to roger".
He also blushed at “booty.”
@@georgefrench1907 Rob starts blushing as soon as he sees Jess 😍
There are so many more ...
Three square meals a day - British sailors ate their meals off square wooden trays.
Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey - cannon balls were stored on brass monkeys, brass and iron contract at different rates as the temperature drops.
Flotsam and Jetsam - Flotsam: debris from a shipwreck Jetsam: debris deliberately jettisoned.
In the Doldrums - the area of sea close to the equator where often the wind is lacking -ships are often "be stilled".
Pipe down - Signal from the boson's pipe for the sailors to retire below decks to their hammocks.
The "brass monkeys" bit has been debunked. "square meals" possibly debunked too.
Brass monkey likely does not derive from this, the wikipedia page has a section. It instead probably came from literal small brass monkey ornaments that were popular souvenirs in the 19c/20c.
Square simply has an old meaning of even or solid. It's just like saying 'a good meal'; nothing to do with tray shapes.
Jetsam is a nice one because it comes from the same origin as 'jettison', meaning to throw overboard.
'In the doldrums' meant being in a slump before it pertained to sailing. Deriving from 'dull', it just means that spirits are low and there is nothing exciting happening, and then a misunderstanding probably led to people misinterpreting windless areas as being 'the Doldrums'.
@ianhadley492 ... I suffered a similar fate here last time... Years ago, pre-web, many urban myths had fact status. A 1960s book confidently asured me newspapers originally had N, E, W and S printed on the page margins like compass points. Maybe someone did that as a gimmick, but it wasn't the origin. Confident but erroneous word origins abounded--and we believed them. With more scholarship brought to bear, old assumptions teeter and fall. I'm scared to quote anything definitively. Even Robb often starts these comments with a correcting paragraph. Like good scientists, we have to bough to new findings and abandon our old theories.
The devil to pay .. .. Longest seam in the keel of a boat is the devil. Pay comes from pitch -- to put pitch and oakum in the seams.
@@uesbob Not quite - the devil was the seam between the edge of the deck and the hull (hence also "between the devil and the deep blue sea"). Wooden hulls flexed a lot so the caulking in the devil would work loose and need replacing frequently. The full saying is "the devil to pay and only half a bucket of tar.
Doing the parrot voice was the right choice in my opinion.
Rob!!
I wanted to tell you how I’m enjoying this series just as much as I enjoy Robwords. These videos are just so much fun for a person like myself who was once a Radio DJ, and HAD to be funny on the air! It was my job to play the current hits, but there were a dozen signals that found their way into the market where I was the #1 Josh Dickey in the “afternoon drive” time slot. In fact, the ratings showed that for every listener my competition had, I HAD TWO! In order to pull off a feat like that, one cannot merely play current records. Being good with the language was rather vital, and YOU are out to beat the other stations when there were multiple other stations playing EXACTLY THE SAME MUSIC AS I WAS! Therefore, your facility with the language had everything to do with whether YOU won in the ratings. So, to be able to sound clever on the air, the better you were with the language, the better chance YOU had to be funnier than the next guy. And it was always fun to pretend there was a picture the audience could see (“Oh…I wanted to show you this…” as though you actually could. Silly and fun. By keeping it a mystery as to what was going to happen next, it made the whole thing MUCH more fun for both myself and my listeners!
My favorite is "leeway" -- the allowance a navigator must make because the wind will push the boat off its point of sail towards the leeward (downwind) side. Thus you must set a point of sail more upwind to actually hit your mark, and the correction you make to your point of sail is called leeway.
And every sailing ship has its own leeway, even though built to the same design.
Rob we still say “toe the line” in the military today - usually at 4am when you just want to sleep.
Cool!
Happy to hear it's still in use today. I recall it well from the 1980s, but most of what I recall from the era is ancient history today. The equipment is pretty much all just in museums, and sometimes I think I should be.
In Canada, a few decades ago, we started a one-dollar coin nicknamed "a Looney." It was named after a type of duck in the design. Later, a two-dollar coin was introduced which people the "DubLoony."
Saying you went to uni with Tom Scott is an excellent namedrop!
You left out the Head. Sailors going to the head, were going to the most forward part of the ship to relieve themselves. The poop is the deck above a cabin, which is generally at the rear. A quick Google search says it comes from the French La Poupe or stern.
Another cabin on old ships was in the crews quarters in the forecastle (pronounced foc'sle and is all the way forward. To go to the head is to climb over the foc'sle into the chains where flushing sprays of seawater are quite regularly experienced. Bear in mind there was no toilet paper in those days:)
The forecastle is from the medieval times when the front of the ship was like a Fort where the sailors would fight. Look at old engravings of medieval ships and it is obvious.
The word _foc's'le_ actually is a rare contraction with two apostrophes.
Coincidentally, the head is where I go to think!
@@azoic6 Think or stink or both?
Hope there was some soap and a towel!!
Dear Rob and Jess,
That was most enjoyable. As a lapsed amateur sailor and lifelong pedant, I offer the following.
There are two bows on a ship or boat, port and starboard. They are the metaphorical shoulders of the vessel. One can stand in the bows of the ship but there is no such thing as the bow. There is however a stem and a prow.
The ship's toilet is called the heads, not the head. Probably derived from the forward projecting heads (or ends) of the longitudinal hull beams, forward of the prow. A refreshing and hygienic place to "crimp off a length", offering a natural bidet effect in choppy seas but not for the faint-hearted in rough weather.
Aft is an adverb, as is forward (pron. forrad). One might move or look aft or forward but the adjectives are after and fore, as in fore hatch and after deck (and see poop). Sadly I have advanced and lost this argument several times in my career as an aerospace engineer when for example, my nomenclature of "after galley" has been rejected in favour of the newspeak "aft galley". It makes my blood boil. There are many nautical terms used in aviation.
Modern leisure sailors frequently use the term "to be pooped" when a following breaking wave (and cf. French "vague") fills their cockpit with green water.
I don't think "port" has anything to do with cutting holes in the side of one's vessel (that is the enemy's job). In common modern usage is the phrase "port side" as in "We'll come alongside (the quay) port side to.". Occam's razor insists that this is the derivation. Coming alongside a stone quay steer-board side would risk expensive damage.
The union jack is the union flag flown from the jack staff of one of His Majesty's vessels.
Athwartships is indeed a lovely word and means across the ship. The plank upon which one rests one booty whilst rowing a dinghy is known as a thwart.
The bitts in timber vessels are a stout pair of posts in the bows to which the end of an anchor or mooring rode is attached. Hence to reach the bitter end was to have used all of your available mooring cable/rode/warp/chain: indicative of a precarious situation with no further options.
A sheet is a line (rope is the material, line refers to the function) used to control the leeward (pron. loo-ard) side of a sail, pulling it to the correct angle to the wind. A square sail would have a line attached to each bottom corner. When attempting to make to windward, the one on the leeward side would act as the sheet. If the vessel (perhaps with the crew under a Bacchanalian influence) inadvertently went about (tacked or gybed) and the lines previously known as sheets were not released in favour of their athwartships counterparts, the sails would go aback, leading to loss of way and possible damage to sails and rigging. Hence the phrase "sheets to the wind". BTW one definition of a ship is a vessel with three masts.
Shiver, sliver and maybe splinter: from the same root do you think?
A book which I am certain you would enjoy is "The Boat-owner's Practical Dictionary" by Denny Desoutter the founding editor of Practical Boat Owner magazine. Interestingly, he anglicised his name from his native French Denis, presumably to appeal to the linguaphobic British market. Good luck in finding a copy.
Many thanks for all you do.
Best regards and good evening,
Dave.
I'm going to disagree with you on bow and head. Both are used in the U.S. Navy to mean, the forward most part of the ship and the ships toilet respectively. I have heard the word prow but not in typical use in the U.S. Navy. Of course other navies and other types of sailors will use the language differently. So not trying to start an argument. I'm just pointing out that the language is malleable.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Indeed, languages continually evolve and diverge like Darwinian species. American vs. British English is a case in point, in usage, pronounciation and spelling. Vive la difference! I have no military naval background but I speak British English. I imagine though that Royal Navy sailors visiting an American warship would still refer to your head as the heads and your bow as the bows. Are there any RN chaps out there reading this that can corroborate this? Best regards and wishing you fair winds from the other side of the Atlantic. Dave.
My favorite unexpectedly nautical etymology is the Afrikaans word for kitchen, kombuis. It's the Dutch word for galley.
The theory is that Europeans who learned Dutch on ships on their way to Cape Town came to know the place where the food is made as the "kombuis", so they started using it as the word for kitchen.
Fantastic! Thanks for this.
I'd love for @RobWords to try to pronounce "kombuis."
20:30 When Rob said that in Old English they called the sea "hwaelwey",
I remembered the line from John Masefield's poem:
I must go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life
To the gulls way and the whales way
Where the wind's like a whetted knife
Port also means "carry" or "transport", so we're back to "loading side".
Porter. Portage. Portable.
Strictly speaking 'porter' and 'port' derives from the Latin 'portus' meaning a 'doorway'. It then came into French language and into English via the Normans. A porter was originally a slave that guarded the doorway of a villa and accepted arriving goods. Thus a sea port is a 'doorway to the sea'. Up until the early 1800's British and English-speaking mariners would call the left side of a vessel the 'larboard' and the right side of the vessel the starboard. This derives from the Old Norse 'Lackboard' and 'Steerboard'. Because the steering oar was traditional placed on the right side and the left side 'lacked' one.
'Port' did not come into common nautical use until the late 1700' or early 1800's. I suspect this is because large vessels by this time were commonly equipped with an 'entry port' or doorway in the hull at the main deck level that made boarding the vessel easier for women and civilians in general. Certainly it was expected that true 'Jack tars' would climb the side to the upper bulwark rather than use the 'port' which was reserved for 'land lubbers' , Ladies and Admirals.
Tradition meant that the left side of vessel was set to the dock or landward. Thus the 'entry port' was always on the left. This entry port is clearly visible on HMS Victory in Portsmouth Naval Dockyard.
'
So 'Port' only came into common use to mean 'left' in the 1800's and is probably linked to the very large high-sided Warships and 'Indiamen' of the period and the frequent passenger transports between the UK and India in the post-Napoleonic War expansion of the British Empire.
Port is passed to the left, and Starbucks is passed in the mall.
As in portage, specifically meaning to take a boat out of the water of a river when it becomes too rough, then carry it to a place where the river is calm.
Fore and aft are directional. Bow and stern relate to the physical part of the ship that is there. Hope that makes sense
Well, "Boy Howdy!', I've finally found my people. Having such a fun and informative vehicle for etymology makes me as happy as a gopher in soft dirt. Thank you both for your time, effort, and energy devoted to Words Unravelled.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the word 'leeway' meaning to give someone a certain amount of freedom, apparantly comes from the nautical term 'leeway' meaning heo drift of a ship away from the wind, or leeward.
It was fascinating to see how many different shades of red Rob's face can take on.☺️
I grew up surrounded by naval slang, without knowing. When I moved to another city I found it odd that people couldn't understand my vocab, for example: gash (garbage), scran, grog, ditch (throw something out), chit, buffer, oppo, come adrift, etc.
In Spanish a 'corsario' is someone who carried a 'patente de corso', which is the letter that showed they had authorization to act as a privateer. In English I think the 'patente de corso' is called a called 'letter of marque'
I really thought they'd go there... they never really addressed that term, merely mentioned it.
Great work. A few notes: my Slovak friends also use "ahoy", in the same sense. A "poop deck" is at the stern, from French/Latin. A timber can be properly shivered by a cannonball. Regarding "port" and "starboard", a rudder mounted to starboard could be damaged if that side were put against a dock, hence keep the other side towards the port.
The bow of the boat: If you think about it, the bows of ancient boats were formed by curved pieces of timber attached to and curving upwards from, the keel. That curve, formed in larger boats by steaming the timber to shape - or in a small boat by using a piece of timber selected from the tree that is already of the right curvature, is curved like a bow - an archery bow - hence the name - the bow.
The Union Jack - the Union Flag flown from the Jackstaff. The Jackstaff is at the front of the ship - originally sticking upwards from the bowsprit, now at the very end of the front of the ship - right up at the pointy end! In the 18th and 19th centuries the main flag was at the back, a tall flagstaff just immediately forrard of the taffrail and carrying a very large flag - those are your Colours. So long as your colours are still flying you are still in the fight - you haul down your colours to indicate to the enemy that you are surrendering.
Avast! : In modern archery in England if someone suddenly and for no apparent reason shouts "FAST" - you instantly stop shooting even if you are at full draw and just on the point of loosing the arrow - it comes from the word Avast and means *Stop!!* - in an emergency context. Nearly 50 years ago I was at a competition on a field shared with a football pitch - there were safety barriers but a footballer crossed those without looking and ran across directly in front of the archers about 50 yards downrange - one archer loosed his arrow during the instant in which the shout "Fast!" was given - the arrow went through the footballers shirt behind his shoulder without actually nicking the skin - he never understood just how lucky he'd just been. If he'd been 6 inches slower it would have penetrated his heart through the left side of his ribcage. My blood ran cold - thought he was a gonner for sure as I watched him and the arrow on a converging course.
Actually - since she told you it referred to the stern of the ship and you *still* didn't realise your landlubber mistake I think you should walk the plank anyway 'cos that counts as 2 not 1.
The sheets are the ropes that come off the bottom corners of the sail by the way. The tacks come off the ends of the yardarms. You use those 2 in conjunction to angle the sail relative to the wind and shape the sail how you want it for best efficiency.
And I'm a couchlubber by the way, watching too much utube.
As a child i though a land-lubber, was 'land lover' and 'Cut of your jib' was 'cut of your jip' (joke or humour) and later 'jut og your jig' as a reference to a jig that holds timber as you cut it. In Australia 'savvy' can refer to a skill, or cunning "She is savvy with a sewing machine" or "She is savvy in these situations"
My mother was born and raised in Alberta, Canada in the 1920s. When I was young, she used to call me a Scallywag when I was doing something impish. I don't recall hearing the word since my childhood. Thanks for brining back some fond memories!
In Ireland, scallywag was/is often used for naughty/mischievous children. I would tell my dogs they were a scallywag for naughty/mischievous behaviour. I definitely heard/used the word a lot here. I honestly thought it was an Irish thing.
(I knew I'd come across 'larboard' before!)
He was thoughtful and grave-but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"
What on earth was the helmsman to do?
- Fit the Second, the Bellman's Speech -
Lewis Carroll "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876).
Also in Tennysons "The Lotos Eaters"....
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
I have heard the term larboard used in some old movie it TV show as well. Maybe an Erol Flynn movie?
'Sheet' is a rope with a very specific purpose - it is the rope that is attached to the free end of a sail, and it controls how taught the sail is, which way it is set.
I was very confused when you talked about the poop deck being at the bow of the ship. All the poop decks I ever heard of were at the stern.
There are so many phrases we have that are derived from sailing and seamanship - you covered quite a few. Others include "swinging the lead" (hanging around doing nothing much), not enough room to swing a cat, tip top and Bristol fashion and so on.
How about "thwart" and "athwart"? A thwart is a seat on a (usually small) boat that is set across the beam of the boat (which reminds me of the phrase "broad in the beam"), and is also a verb - to spoil someone's plans.
Broadside on, of course, is another phrase. Hull down - for something going away from you. Come about. Belay that. Splice the main brace. Heading in the right direction. Keelhaul. On your beam ends. Careen (careening around). And so many more.
And batten down the hatches, meaning to get ready for a storm or a trying experience
I’ve never seen an educated sail, no matter how taut. And “hull down” doesn’t mean a relative direction of sail, but rather that the vessel is far enough away that its hull is below the horizon even though its masts and perhaps other elements of its topsides are still visible - it’s a curvature of the earth thing that can also be extended to things like tanks in reverse slope deployments where only the turret is visible over the crest of a hill.
@@markhamstra1083 Ha - yes, mistype, of course - I meant taut sail. And I know what hull down means, but perhaps didn't describe it well.
Helm's alee!
"Three sheets to the wind" when one of the sails of a four armed windmill is loosed and the whole of the timber built edifice wobbles from the lack of symmetry.
Yes, that's correct, but such disasters only happen when the miller is drunk.
@@michelleeden2272 ...or when a strong wind has ripped the 'sheet' off the frame.
I love the "etymology" that can be gleaned from my favorite line in sitcom history. Buccaneer as interpreted in 3rd Rock From The Sun. When Dick is at a Halloween party dressed as a pirate and someone asks him where his buccaneers are. Right here, under my buckin' hat! I know, old joke taking several forms, but they got away with it on TV and that floated my boat.
Best nautical movie in my library, "Yellowbeard"!
Love the joke,
Why are pirates pirates?
'Cause they aaaarrrgghhh!
😅
A classic
What’s most enjoyable is how nerdy you two get when discussing English language history. 😊
A nautical term in wide common use is "aboveboard," which means 'honest." It's from the practice of pirate crews hiding below the gunwales (sideboards) of their ship as they approached another ship to maintain the advantage of surprise. Law-abiding crews had no reason to conceal themselves when in view of another ship; they were all "aboveboard."
Poop deck is the rearmost deck on a ship. It derives from the French word poupe meaning stern. The poop rail is the railing at the front of that deck. The poop lantern is the lantern hung at the back of the ship. The poop ladder is the stairs leading up to that deck. Getting pooped means a following sea is breaking over the stern of the ship; a very undesirable condition to be in. A poop ornament is a decoration on the taffrail at the stern in the vicinity of the poop deck.
What Rob was referring to is called the ships head, at the bow or the front of the ship. It takes it's name for the head timbers which make up the structure of the bow. His confusion comes from the fact that this was also the location of the 'seats of ease' that were the toilet facilities for the crew. To this day the toilets on a ship are called the head.
24:10 The line on a compass indicating straight ahead (and where you should reading your heading) is called the "lubber('s) line" - supposedly to make reading a compass easier to read for the nautically challenged (a.k.a. "lubbers").
These two work so well together- lovely conversation.
Some points:
1. There are at lest two resons for so many nautical terms starting with the letter "a". One is that they originate from Dutch, such as ahoy and avast. And another is that the "a-" is a prefex meaning "in the direction of ...", such as abeam, abaft and abreast.
2. Robert Newton came from Dorset, not Cornwall.
3. Specifically the poop deck is the top deck of the aftcastle/sterncastle.
4. The phrase "by and large" also has a nautical origin. "By" means sailing as close to the wind as possible, while "large" means sailing with the wind coming from abaft the beam. Together they cover the two situations a sailing ship might face and therefore "by and large" came to mean generally.
I'm rather surprised that 'not enough room to swing a cat' or 'let the cat out of the bag' didn't come up. The former meaning that the room or area one is in is too small in area to swing a cat o'nine tails (a nine roped switch or whip with knots in used to lash/whip sailors) and the latter meaning that someone has informed the officers or let slip a shipmate's transgressions, leading to the the cat o'nine tails to be removed from its bag and be put to use.
5:21 I favor the theory that port for left comes from the side of the ship that's next to the dock. One can grasp the logic by studying the details of Viking ships, which survive today thanks to ship burials from the 8th century. The rudder or "steer board" of a Viking ship is attached to the hull by way of a cunningly crafted ball-and-socket joint carved entirely from wood. It's obvious that the rudder was both vital and expensive. The ship was uncontrollable without it, and not everyone had the skill and tools to construct it. Compared to the hull the steer-board was fragile. It needed to be protected. Consequently, no Viking captain worthy of the rank would tie up his ship so that the steer-board could impact the pier. Thus the left side of the ship was the side always next to the pier when docked. Port as in "door" doesn't make sense as a name for the left side of a ship because early vessels like Viking ships had no doors or portholes. To load or unload the ship, just step over the gunnels.
The reason for the "starboard" or "steer board" side is opposite of the "port" or "larboard" (loading" side) it that it was preferred to tie a boat up to the quay on the side opposite where the rudder was hung in order to avoid damaging the rudder by accidentally hitting the peer while mooring and unmooring. Also, wave action could cause the boat to crush the rudder between the boat and the peer.
I LOVE these! Thank you.
By and Large is a nautical phrase, according to the interwebs I spoke to.
When you are sailing closed hauled, or as close to the wind as you can, you are sailing "By the wind" When you are sailing down wind, you put out all your sails and are "Sailing large". So, "By and large" means "generally", or every point of sail.
I love that you blushed about "roger" robword.
A shiver is a large sliver or splinter of wood. When a cannon ball hits the outside of a wood ship it will produce a cloud of shivers coming off the inside of the ships sides (her timbers). That is usually what produced the most casualties in a sea battle.
Cat out of the bag refers to removing the cat o’ nine tails before flogging. 12:45
Yikes
I read it refers to opening a bag expecting a pig bought from market and discovering it is a (less desirable) cat instead.
"Let the cat out of the bag" means to reveal a secret or deception.
@@CliffSedge-nu5fv I bought a pig in a poke, but my husband let the cat out of the bag and beat me with it nine times.
The sheets are the ropes which control the set of the sail. When they are to the wind the sails are luffing and the ship is not being controlled.
"Splice the main brace" was the term for partaking of an extra tot of rum, originally the reward given to the sailor who has performed this very difficult and important task of repairing the lines controlling the yards.
I love how Rob turns purple when he discusses sex
Isn't it adorable? - JZ
One correction - "Poop" or rather, the poopdeck is actually at the rear.
It's foreward equivalent could be considered the forecastle, pronounced fo'c'sle :)
Ah, got it! Thanks. I like "forecastle".
Rob
There's an inn called Fo'c'sle in Oblivion on a ship
Puppis is a constellation in the southern Milky Way that is the stern of the ship Argo Navis, which used to be a single constellation but was broken up in the 1700s into Puppis, Carina the Keel, Vela the Sails, and Pyxis the Compass.
We definitely need to make lubberwort as euphemism for marijuana a thing.
I support this wholeheartedly. - JZ
For a fuller explanation of lubber, google lubber line. It refers to a line drawn on a compass to show the direction of travel, or course
Living in Malaysia some years ago, a passenger in my car told me to "gostan." I asked him what that meant in English and he somewhat indignantly said "that is English." It's a shortened version of go astern - a phrase which Malaysians always use instead of go backwards. [paul]
That's interesting. A friend of mine from Myanmar was learning English from a Burmese teacher, here in Bangkok. One day she asked me if "overmorrow" was a real world. I was about to say no, but decided to do a quick search, and discovered that it's a word that hasn't been published in English Dictionaries since 1914 as it had fallen out of favour. It comes from the German Ubermorgen, and, quite logically, means "the day after tomorrow". I found it interesting that this fossil word had survived from the former empire. No doubt Malaysia has some similar words that survived. I've been trying to get people to revive "overmorrow" as we never replaced it with a single word.
Poop is the raised section to give more room over the cabin and is in the rear of the ship, not the front. The front is the fo'castle (forecastle) with the obvious derivation.
As for the nautical words beginning with the letter 'A', - you reminded me of a joke we tell here in NY: "The people in NY are very disciplined, and will ONLY steal things beginning with the letter 'A'; a payroll, a car, a boat, etc...."
BTW, new subscriber to Words Unravelled here, though I was listening to the Robwords vlog for several years. Enjoying the vlog, so far!
A couple of notes:
To my knowledge, it was not considered dishonorable to fly the flag of the "wrong" country unless you actually fought with that flag flying. To fly another flag before a fight is just a "ruse de guerre".
The USA also has a Union Jack, which is a naval flag in the form of the 50-starred blue canton of the National Ensign without the stripes.
A privateer is specifically a ship that has been granted "Letters of marque and reprisal". These were granted by national governments to privately owned ships to give them the right to prosecute war on the nation's behalf. Which makes them more equivalent to a private military contractor than a pirate.
Knot teachers and books keep current several nautical terms, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise: the bitter end of a rope is the free end that you use when tying most knots, a "bight" is a loop in the middle of a rope, a "bowline" (pronounced like the weapon you use to shoot an arrow) is a popular non-slipping knot. (Note that I'm leaving aside the technical differences between rope, line, cable, ....)
I'll also mention "mainstay", which is a specific line holding the mainmast in place on a ship.
Bitter... like the end of a whip, which is what a sheet becomes when it's out of control and attached to a flogging sail. That may be related to why the thread wrap that's often used to keep the bitter end of a line from fraying is called whipping.
I always used to think that it was 'tow the line'. Which I understood as something similar to 'pulling your weight'. It's good to know the definition as, apart from anything else, it certainly helps for remembering the spelling.
On the old sailing ships, the poop deck was the highest deck at stern. It gave the navigator/commander the best view how the sails were set & of surrounding sea.
Im old enough & my pop was an English major along with being a WW2 Marine Corps veteran that I knew/learned these as a child. Thanks for posting this.
Old ships loaded goods on the larboard side so that the stearing board on the starboard side wouldn't be damaged while tied to the wharf.
7:50 - fun fact, the butt is an actual unit of measurement, usually meant for fermented liquids (wine, beer, etc). One butt of volume is equal to two hogsheads, or half a tun. So... if you use water, that's about 8 pounds per US gallon. And since the unit butt is about 126 gallons (108 Imperial gallons), then a tun weighs around 2100 lbs, or just about halfway between one short ton and one long ton.
As in a butt of malmsey to drown the Duke of Clarence in.
There was great debate among the sailors of various cultures. The Jib's primary function was to allow for a greater top speed, and each culture argued that it's jib design was faster (and in differing winds they were all correct).
To like the cut of someones jib. Is to think that they are better suited to do a job.
I think the "a" in front of a word is used to draw attention to a matter. Like "a-reise..." wake up call. Its good to notice in noisy surroundings.
Thx, for this great video!
Here are a few others:
Bulkhead - Refers to "walls" in a ship, particularly structural components of a ship that are vertical and run abeam and fore and aft that make the ship rigid. The term comes from the secondary purpose of providing stabilization to cargo in the holds. "Bulki" is Old Norse for cargo, and "head" refers to an upright component.
Speaking of "head", this is what the bathrooms are called. In old ship construction, the bathrooms on a ship were at the bow, also called the "head" of the ship where the toilets would open to the sea below. Being at the bow was ideal because they would be cleaned naturally as the ship cut through the water. So to "go to the head" or "make a head call" is euphemistic on naval vessels to go to the bathroom.
Here's an ancient Naval term for you. There were reeders in ancient Europe. (I know this because my mother's maiden name is "Reeder".) Ancient ships had thatched roofs and reeders were the artisans who repaired ships roofs. Some ancient signs still remain at old ports for the "Reeder" (of various spellings depending on the language).
Re poop-deck/puppis... I've been into astronomy since I was a kid, so I knew that the huge S Hemisphere constellation of Argo Navis ("the Ship Argo") has been subdivided into 3 other constellations: Carina (the keel), Vela (the sail) and Puppis (the stern).
From The Muppet Show segment, Pigs In Space:
CAPTAIN: Everybody to the back of the ship!
CREWPIG: That's "stern", sir...
CAPTAIN: You bet that's stern...
Badump bump crashhhhh.
A ton of nautical terms - especially parts of boats and sails, types of boats as well of features around shipping and shorelines come from the Dutch:
keel, shore, jib, ketch, bow, yacht, schooner, aboard, sail, avast, berm, boom, frigate, leak, pump, rudder, scow, maelstrom, ship, skipper, freight, captain, buoy, plug, bulwark,
The a- prefix in works like aback, along, askance, aggrieve, abaft, adrift, and ashore can mean "to, "toward," or "on."
The directional line on a nautical compass is called the "lubber line."
Robb and Jess make an irresistible team. I watched to the bitter end. (Sorry. I couldn’t help myself)
Well, you've set me right about landlubber (which I always thought was a corruption of land-lover), and about starboard, which I always thought was the side of the ship away from the lights of the port, where you'd only see stars even when the ship was docked.
I love all things language! And I adore this channel. I listen to Rob words, and have recommended it to many . The two of you are so cute together also!
I read Treasure Island as an adult and was amazed at how many of the pirate tropes came from that book. The parrot and everything.
A well deserved classic! I read it many times back in my schooldays.
I guess landlubber was turned into an eggcorn for me, because I always thought it was landlover.
Fun episode for this landlubbing pirate writer. I love that unflappable Jess didn't know about "roger" & the look on Rob's face! Robert Newton's LJS is iconic. That TV show & Robert Shaw's Buccaneers show gave us a lot of todays' modern impression of pirates. The poop section had me very confused. Poop decks are at the back - & I just noticed as I type this that Rob has corrected that in comments. I did learn something... Seems my ancestors transported to America were scallywags both in the 17th- & 19th-century senses.
Dave Attell did a comedy bit on nautical terms. I think Jess would laugh, but Rob would be beet red.
Fascinating episode! Another is "by and large," which I believe was a sailing term for tacking either with or against the wind, and coming to mean, "given the expected complications...." You did mention "taken aback," as in a foiled tack when wind snapped a sail to the wrong side and pushed the ship back.
I do love a show which causes me to learn, appreciate the scholarship, and chuckle at your antics, with Jess's eyepatch opening and your both often corny comments. Learning with humor! None better!
Another one - Amidships, the space between the bow and stern. Also the root of the navy rank of Midshipmen who were considered somewhere between the crew (who live before the mast), and officers who live aft.
Athwartships is a fun one too!
Midships, is also a helm command, meaning to bring the ship's wheel to its natural position.
Glad you've corrected yourself on poop. Jess was right in the Latin origins, I think.
Many other nautical terms you mentioned are still in use in practical seamanship today. The specific lexicon to seafaring (at least in the English speaking world) is substantial. And many terms that might sound "piratey" and archaic to the landlubber, are simply part of shipboard language. I can't vouch for today's navies, but when I served in ships, drinking fountains were called the scuttlebutt. If you called it anything else you'd get assigned extra duty.
Here's a weird technical term in naval architecture. The 'vertical' supports that run fore and aft through the double bottoms of the ship are 'floors'. So decks are horizontal and floors are vertical on a ship.
Captain Aubrey was known for flying false colors to get to the right position for a battle or avoid a battle, but he always had them changed just before engaging. Is it confusing on purpose that shrouds and sheets are ropes and not fabric?
Leeway is surely of nautical origin. The lee is the side away from the wind. A sailing ship would tend to be pushed leeward, so you'd want leeway if you're sailing in a narrow channel or engaging in battle.
This is such a fun collaboration. Keep these clips coming please. Love it
“Jack” is a specific type of flag and is flown from the “Jack staff” at the bow when the ship is at anchor or moored. For example, the star field part of the US flag is the Jack that flies from the Jack staff. The national flag flies from the stern in port. When the ship is underway, both are down and the ship’s national flag flies from the “main truck” on the main mast.
Poop deck: The name comes from the after deck section on Roman ships, (puppim - pronounced “poo-pim”) where small statues or sacred images (puppis - meaning dool or statue) of gods were kept.
A pirate raided on his own and a privateer was given a Letter of Marque which made what he did legal. It was a way for a country to get a Navy without having to pay for it. The privateers split the booty from the ships they captured.
"Shiver" would be a suitable term when cannonball would shatter a ships boards into huge splinters travelling at high speed and making large holes in people.
The boat name Nautilus was indeed coined by Jules Verne, but in turn referred to a mollusk of the same name. This squid-like mollusk has a chambered spiral shell, by which it can control its buoyancy. This is so appropriate, because the Nautilus (both real and fictional) were submarines. Also, the Navy refers to submarines as boats, not ships.
Many former Spanish colonies use pesos - 'pieces' - still.
R. L. Stevenson based Long John Silver on a real person. He was his friend, the poet W. E. Henley Very striking figure, with a great buggerly beard, a heavy Gloucestershire accent and one leg.
"Peso" means "weight". The word for "piece" is "pedazo".
@@pierreabbat6157 Thank you.
I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith :)
I think the Spanish coin came pre-scored into 8 pie shaped pieces.
@@richardh8082 Why does his wooden leg have a name?
There's much more recent naval slang.
For example to "run out of steam" is to not have enough pressure in the boilers to operate the ship.
My Dad was a wartime Chief ERA.
Port was a word that was grabbed at, due to the fact the original word was larboard, which was too similar to starboard and mistakes were made.
A keyboard was a type of steering board which was usually on the port side.
a buccaneer is also the price of corn on the cob some places . . .
A friend of mine did a skit character who would say such things as, "How nauseous!"
The jack is a smaller field of the whole flag, flown from the jackstaff on the stern.
A ship being pounded from astern by high seas is being pooped, in that its foward progress is held back by taking the weight of water on the poop deck. The other officers of the Caine tried to get Captain Queeg to face the ship into the wind during the typhoon for this reason.
I have always thought that the nautical "head" (toilet) had something to do with the poop deck.
Also, a "sheet bend" is a type of knot used by sailors i believe.
I guess the "landlubber" is a lubber not on land, but on the ship. He's clumsy because he's used to the steady floors on land, and not used to having the deck pitch under his feet.
The one that gets me is people saying "to jive with" instead of "to jibe with," another nautical term.
You think it bothers _you?_ How do you think I feel?
Corsair (corsaire in french) is derived from "course" ou "guerre de course", a specific kind of warfare conducted by privateers who had a "lettre de course", an official document allowing them, in times of war, to convert their merchant ship into privateers one in order to disrupt the ennemy's maritime trade routes.
I'm not a linguist, but in Norwegian/Norse, Styrbord/Stjórnborð ("Steerboard" = Starboard) is the side where the steering oar was, and Babord/Bakborð ("Backboard" = Port) is the backside of the one controlling the steering oar. Styre/Stjórn (steer) meaning to control, and Bord/Borð (board) referring to the ship's wooden railing in this context.
"Shiver" is still use here in Norfolk, England regarding a splinter. Norfolk also being a county with a close link to the sea. (Nelson's County!)
I suspect that's also related to the slang term for a knife; a shiv.
Scupper! The holes in the side rails that allow water to drain from the deck are called Scuppers. They can be blocked with Scupper plates to keep fish or small children from falling off the deck. To Scupper means to spoil something or discard something.
Have you heard of the impoverished, deaf pirate?
He had no buccaneers!
Boom-tsch.....
33:50 the rope is fixed at the bitt. The mooring bitt (bollard) is the origin in french of "bitte" when written with 2 t it means the mooring bitt, when written with 1 t it means the male appendage that looks like a "bitt".
This was so much fun! I would love a "part two" of this "skullduggery"!
🎶"Shave and a haircut - two bits!"🎶