The excitement of the 34th America’s Cup completely overshadowed the fact that September 19 was Talk Like a Pirate Day. With all the drama and pageantry of the America’s Cup behind us, it’s time once again to have a little fun with the nautical origins of common English words and expressions.
By CaptaIn Ray
Published: November, 2013
The excitement of the 34th America’s Cup completely overshadowed the fact that September 19 was Talk Like a Pirate Day. With all the drama and pageantry of the America’s Cup behind us, it’s time once again to have a little fun with the nautical origins of common English words and expressions.
Because sailors of yore traveled at a time when most people didn’t, they were exposed to many languages. Since most did not read or write, they only heard these foreign words. When carried back home, these words were adjusted to the native language (in our case, Anglicized). A good example of this is the Danish word "snyg," meaning compact or tidy, which in English became "snug."
The old French word "arrumage" originally referred to how casks (usually wine, not rum) were stowed in a vessel’s hold. By the 15th century, it referred to the arrangement of any cargo. At the end of a voyage, any unclaimed (or unpaid for) cargo was sold right at the dock. As arrumage was absorbed into English, it gave us the name for a sale of leftover odds and ends, a "rummage" sale.
When wind fills the sails and gives life to the vessel, it also causes the boat to lean or tilt. The Anglo-Saxon word for this tilting was "lystan." When a person seems lifeless, we now refer to him as "listless."
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the decks of naval vessels were wood and the seamen were barefoot. For certain occasions, such as witnessing punishment or Sunday services, the crew was required to muster on deck. They had to stand at attention with their toes aligned along the edge of a particular deck plank, hence the expression "toe the line."
Retrieving an anchor was a very labor intensive and time consuming job. The anchor cable was wrapped around a capstan, a drum with a vertical axis of rotation. Bars were inserted into the capstan and men marched around it manually hauling many hundreds tons of boat upwind until the boat was over the anchor and it could be broken out of the bottom and lifted aboard. When was necessary to depart quickly (often because of a change in the weather or the arrival of an enemy), the onboard end of the cable was let go. This process was known as slipping the cable, from which we get the expression for getting away or avoiding someone by "giving them the slip."
In the days of the sailing navy, the goal in battle was rarely to sink the other vessel, but rather to disable it and capture it as a prize. This was best accomplished by shooting away parts of the complex web of rigging, making it impossible for your enemy to maneuver. The lines that controlled the position of a sail were called braces and the main brace (the one controlling the mainsail) was the preferred target. When a battle was over and repairs begun, the main brace was one of the first jobs to be tackled. Because braces had to run through blocks, they could not be knotted and required splicing, a process of weaving the line’s strands together without creating the lump a knot would. This was a very difficult job on a line about five inches in diameter. When completed, a tot of rum was distributed to the entire crew. And so today, having a drink at the conclusion of a difficult job is known as "splicing the main brace."
So, if you’re feeling listless after toeing the line helping at a rummage sale, give others the slip, find a snug spot, and splice the main brace!
Ray Wichmann is a US SAILING-certified Ocean Passagemaking Instructor, a US SAILING Master Instructor Trainer, and a member of US SAILING’s National Faculty. He holds a 100-Ton Master’s License, was a charter skipper in Hawai’i for 15 years, and has sailed on both coasts of the United States, in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is presently employed as the Master Instructor at OCSC Sailing in the Berkeley Marina.
