When a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse There's the Devil to Pay.
If you belong to the landlubber group, always at sea when it comes to the meaning of maritime expressions, help is on the way.You'll find at least 250 colorful explanations in Olivia Isil's When A Loose Cannon Flogs A Dead Horse There The Devil To Pay.
You will have no trouble recognizing the common English words and phrases of seagoing men today. But it has remained for author Isil to run them up the flagpole and salute them with her own salty elucidations.
Phrases such as "scraped from the bottom of the barrel," "they don't know the ropes," "keep a weather eye open," "barge in," or "bitter end," as well as such words as bootleg, fairway, or hijack.
Library research alone did not set the sails or raise the anchor on Isil's work. In her youth she played on the rotting deck of the U.S. Niagara, listening to old sailors' yarns. Today, she sails as a crew member aboard an authentic working replica of a late-1500s ship, the Elizabeth II. in North Carolina and serves as chief historic interpreter of the organization that runs the ship.
"My dad. a diver-dock worker during World War 11. and my, three sailor uncles ... influenced my interest in the colorful language of the sea," Isil writes in the preface. "Much to my father's and uncles' delight, and my mother's extreme horror, I was the perfect mimic and repeated everything (and I do mean everything!) that came within earshot. At the age of six, I was packed off to the Sisters of Saint Joseph and the refined environment of a convent school - and probably just in the nick of time."
The author's memory has not failed her, nor has her fascination for the nautical sayings that are anchored in our contemporary English speech.
Quoting from the intro to her work, "With bearings set, and navigation charts in hand, [let us] embark on a short sail ... through the sea of words that await .... Conditions may sometimes be foggy but, by and large, smooth sailing is in the offing."
Let's sail first into the question of why we sometimes carry a difficult struggle to its "bitter end." The answer is simple, once you understand that the anchor rope on old sailing vessels was attached to a stout oak post called a bitt. When the rope was played out, the end nearest the bitt was called the bitter end. Why, of course.
Our word bootleg comes from the practice of sailors smuggling goods ashore in the upper part of their seaboots. And all the time we had this crazy idea that the word originated from our game of football, wherein the quarterback fakes a handoff to a teammate but keeps the ball himself and runs with it. That's how much we know.
If you have ever "chewed the fat," credit the crews in the old days of wooden ships and iron men" who talked and grumbled while chewing their daily ration of brine-toughened salt pork.
Author Isil has chased the word fairway all the way back to William Falconer's 1789 Universal Dictionary of the Marine: "The path or channel of a narrow river, bay, or haven in which ships usually advance in their way up or down." Today's golfers, of course, have altered the meaning to "the narrow channel of neatly mowed grass lying between trees, sand traps, and other objects of temptation for their capricious golf ball in flight."
As for the word hijack, perhaps you aren't old enough. But we'll risk it. The nautical version, Isil explains, stems from the fact that "Hi, Jack!" was a prostitute's come-on to a lonely sailor on shore leave. Distracted by the greeting, the unwary victim was knocked unconscious by the "lady's" confederates and sold to a ship in need of a crew. Also spelled highjack, the word has been reduced to mean nothing more than the illegal seizure of cargo or a vehicle.
Sailing right along, when the kids begin arguing over possession of the TV remote, we yell at them to knock it off!" Why do we yell "knock it off"? Because galleys were once rowed to the rhythm of a mallet striking a wooden block. When the knocking stopped, it was a signal to stop rowing and rest. Or did you already know that?
Before we knock off, let's look at knock off s "cousin" expression - "pipe down." Author Isil traced its origin to. a boatswain's pipe, or whistle, whose high-pitched sound was used to transmit commands throughout the ship. Each command was identified by its cadence. The cadence to "pipe down" was the last call at night, commanding all unnecessary noise and activity to stop. Makes sense.
One more thing. Chances are you have, in a careless moment, used the expression "son of a gun" without giving it a second thought. Well, think on this:
Isil says the British Navy in the early 19th century occasionally permitted wives of sailors to accompany their husbands to sea. Because working spaces had to be kept clear, the only place where a woman could give birth aboard ship was behind a canvas shelter jury-rigged between cannons on the gun deck. We'll leave it to you to figure out the expression.
As for our working space for this review, we've pretty well arrived at the bitter end. This means we'll have to knock off without a word about the book's sections on "Wind, Waves and Weather" and "Yarns of the Sea, Legends, Myths and Superstitions." We must therefore mind our p's and q's like a sailor already "three sheets to the wind."
As for explaining the title of Isil's work, we must leave it up to you to buy the book. Son of a gun.
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| Author: | Stoddard, Maynard Good |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Saturday Evening Post |
| Date: | Jul 1, 1996 |
| Words: | 956 |
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