John, Thanks so much for the kind words.
I'm with you. The use of Nautical words in our everyday speech .. IS..fascinating! It's a subject that hooked me long before I had a boat. And you are so right when you say that sailing and Empire building gave us a rich language. Nautical terms are sprinkled throughout our Day to Day communication. A lot of words we use are from the Old English, with Old German and some Old French added. Many parts of the Sailing world. I'm not an expert on the subject, but it's pretty obvious that Illiterate workers pronounced and used the words as THEY understood them. And on sailing vessels, the words had to be quick to say, understandable and be at an unschooled level. One really interesting oddity I found early on..was the use of the letter "A".. as a preposition. ( at, on, in, an.. etc) So words like "astern "(a-stern) ... literally means AT... The stern of. And "alee" (a-lee) BY...the Lee... Words like .. Aloft, Ahead, Abeam, Adrift... etc, etc.... Take on a WHOLE different light. I'm grateful for some of the earlier researcher/writers who documented a lot of our Word History. For me, I use these words to keep me from being ..ALOOF ( "a-luff" .....to sail as close to the wind as possible to keep off a Lee shore) .. LOL Uniform Whisky, Ralph Ahseln "Oblio" Gresham OR ----- Original Message ----- From: John Guttridge To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: RE: Clews and Cringles was: RE: [IC27A] Re: Was Jib Sheets > Barber Hauler Ralph, I appreciate tremendously the lesson in etymology. It has always mystified me as to why a grommet was a cringle when you put it in a sail but then again, most of us don't really speak any of the languages that sailing was originally described in so much of language is difficult. I have to say that it is fascinating how many terms in a normal English speakers vernacular there that are sailing terms that have been adapted for general use and most people don't even know it. It really points to how important sailing was to the empires that conquered much of the world at one time or another. Even though most of us have forgotten how to sail we wouldn't be where we are today without it. Are any of your articles published online in a public readable fashion? Best, John a.. 5 b.. 13 c.. 1 .
