Just Saying...

In the last ‘Blog’ there was mention, I believe, of the ‘bitter end’. You will not be surprised to hear that this is an expression derived from the Royal Navy in yesteryear. The end of the anchor line secured to a sturdy post on the deck called a bitt. The line was paid out in order to set the anchor. However, if the water was deeper than anticipated the rope would pay out to the bitter end; if it was improperly secured... And so the "bitter end" of any line is the loose, unsecured end.

There are lots more. We have spoken about some of these in the past so we shall see if we cannot find a few new ones with which to entertain ourselves.

We have come to see the expression ‘bail out’ in common parlance these days. Originally it meant to remove the water from the bilges of a swamped ship to prevent it sinking but now it refers also to helping out anyone in difficulties.

In Naval terms, ‘stand aloof’ meant to keep your distance and maintain that distance (from another ship).

In the seventeenth century the Spanish would raise a false flag to deceive the enemy. This was to ‘bamboozle’ the enemy.

From the early fourteenth century the Admiralty collected all the maritime laws and conduct into a book that was known as the ‘Black Book of the Admiralty’. The punishments listed for contravening these laws and terms of conduct were ‘Draconian’. The more serious offences would be met with drowning, marooning, and starvation; these were meted out for serious offences like repeatedly sleeping on watch. Nowadays the punishments are less severe but could lead to social disgrace if you are someone’s ‘black book’.

During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Admiral Nelson deliberately held his telescope to his blind eye so that he could not see the flag signal from the Commander to cease the bombardment. He won the battle. In modern terms, turning a blind eye to something means to intentionally ignore it.

In the time of the Spanish-American War, sailors wore leggings that were called ‘boots’. It came to mean a Navy (or Marine) recruit. The Military still go to ‘boot camp’.

‘Brought Up Short. When under way a ship can only make an emergency stop by dropping the anchors. This is an extremely unpleasant thing to do for both the ship and the personnel on board. Someone who is brought to an unfortunate standstill by a change in circumstances is now said to have been ‘brought up short’.

A ‘caboose’ is a kitchen on a ship’s deck. Now it is referred to as accommodation for a train’s crew.

On sailing ships the Officer of the Deck would keep a ‘weather eye open’ for any changes in the wind so that sail could be added or shortened (reefed) as necessary. If a good breeze appeared then he would order the crew to ‘carry on’ and that meant that every inch of canvas that the ‘yards’ would carry would be hoisted. Now it merely means, “Carry on with your work.”

‘Letting the cat out of the bag’ has two possibilities. The one I like best is the one that is not nautical but both are interesting.

The first one is that the cat-o-nine-tails, which is a nine-thonged whip, was stored in a felt bag. Sometimes the bag would be waved in front of a seaman to threaten him with what could happen if he did not reform immediately. It was only ever taken out of the bag just before punishment was inflicted. (It is from the cat-o-nine-tails that we undertand a cat as having nine lives.)

The other explanation is that it was possible to buy a piglet in a sack (a pig in a poke). If you failed to check the contents of the sack you may find, after purchase, that it only contained a cat—less than tasty, I am told! This deception was only realised after ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ and, hence, ‘never buy a pig in a poke’!

Nowadays the expression ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ means to reveal a secret. That’s why I like the second one more than the first.

The Latin for ‘canal’ is ‘channel’. In nautical terms it means the movement of water within a larger body of water that has sufficient depth for navigation. ‘Going through the proper channels’ these days does not, necessarily, assure one of a pleasant passage

‘Chewing the Fat’ was a literal saying. Before refrigeration the sailor’s meal would be tough, cured meat that was either pork or beef. These meats were durable but required an enormous amount of chewing to make then edible! If you ‘chew the fat’ now you are having a chat with a friend—or talking a lot!

If two blocks of rigging tackle were so hard together they couldn't be tightened further, it was said they were "Chock-a-Block". Meaning something is filled to capacity or over loaded.

The term ‘cranky’ is possibly from the Dutch krengd, a crank was an unstable sailing vessel. Due to a faulty design, the imbalance of her cargo, or a lack of ballast, a crank would heel too far to the wind. It has come to mean ‘irritable’.

I think that’s enough for the time being. The point is that there are lots of terms, ‘enough room to swing a cat’, ‘son of a gun’, ‘freeze the balls off a brass monkey’, ‘fly by night’, and ‘garbled’ are just a small sample, to show that the derivation of terms and words in the English language are more often from the Navy than you might think.

Now I don’t want to ‘gripe’ about this ‘hodgepodge’ so I’m off see a ‘mate’ about his ‘hooker’s’ ‘nipper’ in the ‘skyscraper’. I believe he is ‘under the weather’ or just ‘pooped’ perhaps.

Perhaps later we’ll do the ‘whole nine yards’!