Knowledge: Where does ... actually come from? Terms from the sailor's language explained
YACHT-Redaktion
· 04.10.2024
Clear ship/clarify
The word "clarus" came to us from Latin. It could mean "bright", "clear", "loud" and "resounding far and wide", "bright", "clear", "famous", "shining". In the maritime sector, it took on a broader meaning, namely "ready" and "in order". This gave rise to orders such as "Ready for battle!" or "Ready to sail!" in the 19th century However, if the ship is unclear, something is wrong on board, which could affect the rigging, the deck, the crew or even the guns. The skipper must then have everything made clear as quickly as possible, i.e. get everything in order. This is also known as "clearing the ship". The expression has long since become widespread, although on land it usually only refers to tidying up and cleaning. In English, there is a distinction between two levels of clearing the ship. On the one hand, we say "to be in ship-shape", which means "in perfect order" - just as tidy as a ship going on a long voyage. On the other hand, we say "jury-rigged", which means "only for the day" (jour), "rigged and orderly for a short time".
Fits in:
Porthole
Sometimes you stand like an ox in front of a new barn door and make big eyes at the explanation of nautical terms. This is naturally the case with portholes, as the term actually comes from the gills of cattle. Anyone who has studied art history may be familiar with the term "bull's eye" from round windows in baroque buildings, sometimes even covered with a lid-like roof. It was also used in French to describe containers for relics as early as the 12th century. Although the word "ox-eye" was common in Germany, German sailors did not directly adopt it for the round, often outward-facing ship windows. It only came to us from English around 200 years ago. Bull's eye" became the Low German "bulloog" and finally the High German "bull's eye".
Drift
Anyone who drifts off course or off topic. Something is pulling him, driving him away. This is an ocean current, but it can also be an ice current, as Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) knew, who wanted to reach the North Pole with its help. In both cases, there is an old land expression behind it, which can still be found in Friedrich Schiller's (1759-1805) "Maid of Orleans": "Farewell then, you beloved drifts." The drifts here simply refer to pastures. The sea drift and the drifts are directly related to "to drive". Sometimes it's the cattle that are being driven, sometimes it's the sea, which the wind drives in one direction, causing ships to drift. The specialised nautical term slowly came into general use from the late 18th century onwards, when it could only refer to "drifting in the sea" in general terms.
Teasing
Every young man who wanted to join the Hanseatic League of merchants and cities in the Middle Ages was teased. Its name goes back to the name of a guild, which was formed from the old Gothic word "hansa" for "crowd" and "multitude". In the High Middle Ages, the term was increasingly used to refer to a group of merchants, and then to the "German Hanseatic League" in particular. Before being admitted, young men were given more or less symbolic beatings and all remnants of pre-Hanseatic life were scraped off with a rough wooden knife. They were then dipped in all sorts of unappetising liquids or had the same poured over them, forced to wriggle through the spokes of a wheel and the like. This is reminiscent of similar rituals in line or equator baptism. In both cases, the newcomers' resilience, reliability and sense of humour are tested. Originally, teasing actually just meant "making someone look like a Hans". It was only through the unpleasant initiation rituals that the meaning slowly but surely expanded to its current variety of "teasing", "having a good time" and "tormenting".
Grog
On board English ships in the Caribbean, sailors often saved their rum rations in order to drink large quantities at once later on. The consequences were sometimes fatal. On 4 August 1740, however, Admiral Vernon ordered "... half a pint of rum to be mixed daily with a quart [1.136 litres] of water". At the same time, he ordered a dispensing ritual that quickly became mandatory for the British Navy: "... that the proper daily allotment of half a pint per man ... be mixed every day with a proportion of a quart of water to every half pint of rum, mixed in a drinking water cask ... and when so mixed, it shall be dispensed to them in two allotments daily, one between 10 and 12 in the morning, the other between 4 and 6 in the afternoon". Because the admiral was called "Old Grogram" after his notoriously worn coat of grogram fabric and then shortened to "Old Grog", the rum-water mixed drink was first given the name "grog", which was later applied to many other spirits on board English ships. It was from there that grog came into German via sailors. Because they added lemon juice to the mixture, British sailors were called "Limeys" by the Americans.
Flagship
In 1805, when the Battle of Trafalgar took place, the "Victory" was adorned with a special piece of cloth - Horatio Nelson's admiral's flag. It designated the ship as the seat of the staff. And because of this flag, all leading ships of naval formations were called flagships until modern times. There were flagships in every navy, and the leading admirals, who were also called flag officers, usually chose the most beautiful, fastest and most powerful ships in a fleet. This was the reason why the term became colloquial and first naturalised as a term for the most expensive vehicles of car manufacturers. For some time now, however, even top products of all kinds, including television programmes, have been referred to as the flagship of a company or broadcaster. An admiral - incidentally, the word comes from Arabic and goes back to "emir" - is no longer on board.
Lümmel fitting
Full sailors smile agonisedly when the skipper laughs because the ambiguous thing is mentioned. In English it is simply called "goose neck", while in German the term "Scharnierzapfen" (hinge pin) was used around 1900. The name "Lümmelbeschlag" (Lümmel fitting) refers to the pin of the said hinge, the Lümmel, which connects the fitting on the mast side with the Lümmel bearing on the boom. How did it get its name? Well, the linguist Adelung defined the word "Lümmel" in 1796 as follows: "Only in the lowest forms of speech, a strong but lazy person in the most despicable sense, a lazy rascal, and in a broader sense a coarse, uncouth, clumsy person." It comes from the word "lummen" for "to be slack, lazy". The appendage on a man does not always behave immorally, but is limp most of the time, so that it was also called a "lumpen", and a condom accordingly a "lumpen bag". This is where the term "lout" came from for all kinds of pens, including the one in question here.
Tail
Who would have thought that ship's stern and garden hedge had anything to do with each other, but they do. Both go back to pre-Germanic expressions that have to do with lichen, with the enclosure, the hag and the thorn bushes that enclose a property. On ships, the helmsman's place was protected very early on with wickerwork, a protective grid, a retaining fence. As the helmsman and his "hedge" were usually found at the back of the ship, the term "stern" came to mean the rear end of the ship as a whole. Initially only used in Low German, the special nautical term first found its way into literature and then into everyday language with the popular sea stories of the 18th century.
Pilot
Often nothing works without pilots. The experts for their local waters are so called because mankind is lazy. Before the middle of the 17th century, one of them was actually called a "pilot". This was a High German expression that had been adopted from the Middle Low German sailor's language, where it was very similar to "lôtsman". It's easy to immediately think of the plumb line, which is extremely important for coastal waters, but in this case it's an Old English word, namely "lâdmann". This was a guide, someone who knew the way, and the way was called "lâd". The second part of the word "Lootsmann" disappeared quite quickly after 1650 - probably for reasons of convenience. All that remained for the actual guide was "Lotse".
Ocean
In Greek mythology, Okeanos is a god and at the same time a kind of primeval river, which until the time of Herodotus was imagined as a mighty boundary water of the inhabited world and its seas, always flowing into itself and surrounding everything. Educated people knew the name "Okeanos", of course, but for a long time did not use it to refer to the sea.
It was only in the 17th century that scholars found it fashionable to call the world's oceans by the name of the mighty Greek god, albeit in the Latinised form "Oceanus". This would actually have been pronounced with a "k", but in Germany the "c" in most Latin words was pronounced like a "z" and sometimes replaced the letter with it, so that people also wrote Ozean. It was not until the 19th century that the common people in this country became comfortable using the foreign sea word as a matter of course in everyday speech.
Fender
You should never forget fenders before entering locks or mooring at hard quay walls. They ensure that shocks are buffered or, in other words, fendered off, so that the ship's side remains protected. Before the 19th century, the word "mooring" was preferred for elasticated bodies on ropes made of cordage, cork or similar, which protected the outer wall from unwelcome damage caused by pressure and impact. In the past, "mooring" meant something like "going alongside", and because protection was needed, it also meant "wreifholz" or "Schiffsberge". It wasn't until around two hundred years ago that the English word "fender" was coined, an abbreviation for "defender". And it's true: the fender defends the hull against particularly fatal attacks.
Anchor
What an important hook on the sailboat: the anchor. A beautiful symbol of hope and salvation! Although the word sounds so German, the anchor is still very close to the ancient Greek word for the same thing: "agkyra" - pronounced "anküra". It took a few hundred years for countries further north to adopt the word and the thing. Here they had previously used anchor stones on lines, which were called "senkil" or "senkilsteine". The Romans aided us in the transfer of technology when they sailed their ships across the North Sea or the rivers. They called the ship's mooring "ancora", and because it was so practical with a pole, shaft and arms, it and the term were adopted in many European countries. Even in Old High German it was called an "anchor". Incidentally, "lichten" has nothing to do with bringing it to light, but with the original Low German word "lichten", which means "to lift up" or "to air".
Course
The course comes from the Latin word "cursus" for running and racing. It also refers to the path, the race, the circuit, the route and the journey. It has found its way into German in various areas, such as stock market course, author's course and dance course. The word "cursus" first entered the French language with the meaning "journey of a certain direction" and there into seafaring, where it could also mean "voyage of booty" and led to the word "corsair". The Dutch and Germans adopted it in the 15th century at the latest as a term for "ship's route" and "direction of movement of a ship".
Sheet
The old wish "mast and sheet breakage" is surprising. The mast may well break, but the line used to adjust the sail to the wind is more likely to tear. Originally, however, the word "break" not only referred to the tearing of hard things, but actually also to the tearing of ropes, fabric, etc. The sheet itself, on the other hand, is probably like the sheet itself. The word "Schot" itself, like "Schott", probably goes back to a Germanic word meaning "to shoot". This also gave rise to the word "Schoß" in the sense of "shot out", which also referred to the pointed and angular. The connection to the sheet resulted from its attachment to the angle, to the corner of the sail. And via the angle, the sheet is also connected to the lap in the physical sense, which was understood as the angled niche between the thigh and abdomen, especially when sitting.
Bugging/Bug
The two maritime expressions are only apparently related. Bugsieren has quite a journey behind it. The Dutch, from whom the Germans adopted "boegseeren" or "boegsjaren", had themselves imported the word from Portuguese. There, "puxar" meant something like "pull" and "tug". German sailors, who naturalised the word in our country around 400 years ago, were of course unaware of this complicated origin story, but they knew the bow as the name for the front part of the ship, which had evolved from the name for the shoulder and shoulder blade of cattle or horses. A ship was understood to be a kind of sea horse, so that what came together at the front from the left and right could be understood as the shoulders, i.e. the bow. The similar sound of "boegseeren" and "Bug" then led to the Dutch "o" simply becoming a "u". By the way, "bugsieren" originally only meant "to take a ship in tow". Today, you can tow pretty much anything and even someone.
Sailor's yarn
Alongside the fishing or hunting tale, the sailor's yarn is probably the best-known name for tall tales. In all three cases, it is about inventions and exaggerations by people who do something that most normal citizens are not involved in and who are later told about it. Sailors' yarns were inspired by the spinning parlours, where girls and women spun both yarns and stories. These were often fantastic tales and horror stories that were told to each other so that the work didn't get boring. The narrative thread comes from here - and that someone is crazy. Sometimes the stories just sounded too strange. There was a lot of mending and splicing to be done on board, and people also liked to pass the time by telling stories. As sea stories had an exotic and unbelievable flavour for most landlubbers anyway, and sailors also liked to amaze people with their accounts, these tales were referred to as "sailor's yarns", i.e. tall tales spun while splicing, mending and sewing.
Atoll
The term "atoll" only came to us from English in the 19th century. A sailor from France was important for its earlier spread: François Pyrard de Laval (1578-1621). After a shipwreck in the Maldives, he and his comrades were imprisoned for five years. The Frenchman learnt Dhivehi, the language spoken there. The fact that the inhabitants called their type of island "atolhu" or "atulo" is mentioned by the captured sailor in his book "Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval", written in 1607. There he defines the atoll as follows: "Coral island forming a more or less closed ring around an inner lagoon." The much-read English clergyman and travel writer Samuel Purchas (ca. 1577-1626) probably adopted the name for this "multitude of small islands" in 1613, writing "atollon".
Bermuda Triangle
Vincent Gaddis (1913-1997), ex-reporter and ex-PR man, published "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" as a pulp magazine, i.e. dime novel, in 1964. Based on a few unsolved cases, he wrote fictitious stories about missing aeroplanes, tankers, sailing ships, mysteries, secrets and the uncanny. He could have chosen other parts of the sea, but "Bermuda Triangle" sounded good. Charles Berlitz (1914-2003), grandson of the founder of the language school, ex-employee of the Berlitz School and ex-secret service agent, was inspired by the work. Ten years later, his book "The Bermuda Triangle" was published. The topic was the same, the mixture similar: a few facts, plus many hypotheses disguised as facts, contradictions, errors and inventions. A flood of other books, articles, essays and films by other authors followed. Hardly anyone was bothered by the modern fairy tale - and not even by the fact that the Bermuda Triangle had completely arbitrary boundaries. All kinds of shipwrecks also occurred outside the area between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida. Over the decades, the Bermuda Triangle expanded as needed and many times over in order to find enough cases.
General average
In Arabic, "Awariya" meant "goods damaged by water" 1,000 years ago. The term entered Italian through sailors in the Mediterranean, where it was already used around 1300. Both French and Dutch acted as transit languages for the word. Incidentally, it was sometimes written with an f, sometimes with a v, and often with a y, i.e. "Haverye". How did the change in meaning come about? Well, at first the term was used to refer to transport costs and fees as well as damage to goods during sea transport. Of course, this happened especially in the event of a shipwreck, so it could also be used for this. From here, the word spread to large land vehicles, machinery and equipment. This is perhaps due to the media's tendency to use dramatic language - a shipwreck was almost always terrible and very often had huge consequences. Thus, the accident lent itself to dramatising damage of all kinds, right up to an accident at a nuclear power plant.
Tidal range, ebb and flow
The phenomenon of regularly changing water levels has always fascinated people. They recognised a rhythm, i.e. that the occurrence has something to do with time. The time is called "tîd" in Low German, which is spoken by the sea, and the tide alone was originally called "getîde". These words gave rise to the terms "tide" and "tidal range", i.e. the difference between high and low tide. The term "tides" only developed in the 16th century, precisely because the tides are related to time, dividing it up. High and low tides follow each other alternately. In Old High German, "fluot" still meant "overflowing water". It was not until the 15th century that it developed into an antonym for the ebb tide, which is linked to the words "ab" and probably also "aber", and the word apparently first referred to the countercurrent to the tide, a kind of "Aberflut". In High German, it was therefore called "Abflut" and "Ablauf" until the 16th century. It was only after this that the abbreviation "Ebbe" was formed.
