What's so poopy about a poop deck? What
exactly is a landlubber? And can you love anywhere else? What nautical terms have sailed
their way into the English language? Did pirates actually say things like shiver me timbers?
Shiver me timbers! We hope you like the cut of our jib as we show our true colors in
another episode of Words Unraveled. [Music] Avast ye, podcast lovers! Welcome to another
Words Unraveled. I mateys, today we set sail on the etymological tides of nautical terms. You said
you were going to do hammy pirate, and you—you did hammy pirate. Thank you! I just—I want to be a
pirate at all times; that's where I am in life. Coming up in the podcast today, we're looking
at all things nautical, as Jess put it—or pirate, as J put it. We're taking to the high
seas! So, we're going to be covering stuff like nautical idioms—idioms that you might not even
know have come from maritime history. We're going to look a bit at pirate speak. What
else are we going to try and cover, Jess? We're going to dig into words that derive from
nautical situations and nautical contexts. So, one of the most interesting facets of English, I
think, is that so many words derive from the Greek 'n' or 'ship,' and 'naus,' meaning sailor, which
is where the word 'nautical' comes from. Exactly, exactly! Nautical, Navy, navigate. There's
also a word, 'navicular,' meaning boat-shaped, which is fun. And then, there's
'nausea'—the condition of feeling like you're going to vomit—literally means
seasickness or ship sickness. No way! So, all types of nausea are essentially seasickness,
be it on land or on the waves, basically. And then, the Latin term, 'ad nauseum,' refers
to something that has been done or repeated so often that it's become annoying or tiresome—or
to sickness. That's what it means—literally, to the point of being sick. I like that
one, but specifically seasick. One of those—one of the things I like about adium
is you can use it with people without them necessarily knowing that you're referring to
vomit. It's always nice to be able to sneak in a little bit of crudeness unspotted.
Absolutely! I think it's a funnier term than we often give it credit for, but it's
not always in, like, vomit-related words. Uh, we also have "astronaut," which I think is the
cutest etymology in the English language. It means "star sailor." That's nice. And then the Russians
had the cosmonauts, which were "Cosmos Sailors." And then, of course, you've got Aeronautics as
well, which is like an "air sailor," M.H. And then in mythology, you've got the Argonauts, as of
Jason and the "argonut" on the Argo. That's also a famous boat called the Nautilus, right? That's
right. And "Nautilus" is from that same route from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Um, and it's
like basically a poetic form of the Greek word for sailor. There's also the anatomy of a boat, which
can be quite a sort of complicated vocabulary, can't it? So, you can't just say left and right
on a boat; you have to say "starboard" and "port" or "port" and "starboard" to put those the right
way round. And then you've got the front and back as well, "fore" and "aft," right? Yeah, the "fore"
and "aft," uh, or the "stern" and "bow" as they're also known, right? The "fore" and "aft," actually,
that really helps you know which one you're talking about, but "stern" and "bow" still a
little bit confusing. Allow me to explain, though, because interesting etymologies behind every
single one of these; love this. "Starboard" is a really good one. So, uh, "starboard" comes from
an old Germanic term—loads of these, by the way; they're really, really old terms from boats way
back before the English language was around, right? So, old Germanic boats would have a rudder
just on one side. A rudder is what you used to steer a boat, so "starboard" has nothing to
do with stars; it comes from "steer board," right? Ah, the "board" being the side of the
ship, yes. So, "starboard" would be the side that you steer on. The opposite of "starboard"
wasn't "port," it was actually "larboard." I have heard that "larboard" is influenced by the
word "starboard," right, but it was probably more likely something along the lines of "L board"
to start with, and "L"—anyone who speaks German will know that "L" means to load; "Laden" means to
load, but it's where our word "load" comes from, right? Okay, so the loading side, it's the side
that you load things on, and then eventually we change that because it sounds too much like
"staro," and we go with "port" instead. And the origin of that usage of "port" is a little bit
debatable because there are those who say, "Oh, well, it's 'port' because, you know, you sort of
dock on that side." That would be my assumption, right? Yeah, yeah, but actually, the more popular
idea among etymologists is that it's related to the word "portal" or "porthole," or you know,
actually, the word "port" is kind of related to that as well in its sort of broader sense—the idea
of it being an entry point. And so, the port side of a boat is the side where you have kind of the
holes that you're shoving the stuff you're loading through, implying a door. That makes sense.
Um, that's also—is that also the idea behind, like, an actual port? Is that it's an entry point
into a location? Yeah, I think so, yeah. That's a port is an entry, and a harbor is where you'd
actually stop. So, what about the stern, which is at the back, and the bow, which is at the front?
Well, the stern relates to the fact we're back to steering again, but later boats are steered,
you know, from the back, so that's how you can remember that the stern is at the back because you
steer from the back, and it kind of sounds like steer. And the bow, well, actually, the word "bow"
seems to possibly be related to an old Germanic word for the shoulders. Oh, interesting,
yeah, which would mean it's related to a tree's boughs, which are obviously like the arms,
the shoulders of a tree. B-O-U-G-H, interesting. "B-O-U-G-H," yes, spelled differently. So
we got very deep into the etymology of the parts of a boat, but a lot of those terms
of parts of a boat, not just those ones, but the many bits and bobs around the boat,
the many strings and ropes and masts and sails, pop up in a lot of nautical idioms, which
I think is something that if we're tackling this subject, people would expect us to talk about.
Are there any that you've ever wondered about? The one that first came to mind was the cut of
your jib, which I know a jib was a type of sail, is that right? That's right, yeah. A jib is a
triangular sail at the front of a boat, and they would kind of be unique to different countries,
so you'll be able to judge, or you might judge, an approaching boat by the cut of its jib, so by
the shape of this specific sail at the front. So, that's the cut of his jib, the cut of one's jib. But you've also got "to tow the line," which
a lot of people sometimes think is "toe to W," but it's not, it's "toe" as in, you know, the
fingers of your feet, and that comes from the British Navy where British naval seamen would
be made to line up on deck for inspection. They would have their feet, and they would line up
along the seams of the deck, and basically, to tow the line was to have your little toes
right up against that line and, you know, to be standing ready for inspection,
to be complying with orders. Fabulous. Um, another one that comes up in the office space
a little bit is the term "Scuttlebutt" or like, "What's the Scuttlebutt?" which is also a nautical
term for gossip and rumors and interpersonal news among, you know, co-workers nowadays. But
then, sailors back in the day, instead of, uh, it's basically the sailor's equivalent of water
cooler talk. Um, so a "Scuttlebutt," a "butt" is a cask of fresh drinking water aboard a ship,
and there was a hole, a scuttle, in the top of it, and sailors might loiter around it, and as
they sip water, they might chatter about all the happenings on the ship. And of course,
to scuttle a boat is to deliberately sink it, stick a hole in it. There you go, "Scuttle" and
"butt," it fits together nicely, doesn't it? Uh, what else have we got? Oh, "to be taken
aback" is supposedly a nautical term. "Aback" obviously just means backwards,
and if a sail gets taken aback, it's basically been blown back on the
supporting structure that's holding it up, which is, you know, obviously
not great news. Oh, interesting. Someone sent me an email the other day asking if
I knew why so many nautical terms had that 'a' prefix on the verb, like 'a back,' 'a drift,'
'a shore,' and I wasn't sure. Have you ever thought about this, Jess? If I had to guess, I
would say it's because a lot of these are uh, are Germanic terms. So words like 'a shore,' 'a
head,' 'a side,' 'a back,' 'asleep,' 'above'—all of these are uh, are Germanic, and it's from
the old English prefix meaning like 'in' or 'onto.' And I think that a lot of these
nautical terms are uh, have stuck around as Germanic terms rather than being
replaced by romance terms in English, um, because it was such a critical
part of like the culture of Britain. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean,
we should say that there are an unusually large amount of nautical terms in the English
language, and it is primarily because, one, Britain is an island nation; two, and partially
sort of following on from that fact, Britain had an extremely powerful na—you know, the most
powerful Naval force in the world for quite a long time. So not only were people using a lot of Naval
terms back home and within the Navy, but they were also spreading these Naval terms around the world.
So that's why there are a lot of Naval terms in the English language, and a lot of them hiding in
plain sight, like we've just been talking about. For example, um, you know, to take a different
tac, people might not necessarily know that that refers to how you sail into the wind; you zigzag,
you change direction. Ooh, interesting. Yeah, it's called 'tacking.' So to change tack, you
are changing your direction to still be able to move forward. You know, another one is to 'show
your true colors,' which, oh, yeah, comes from conflict on the high seas. Is this where we're
getting into Pirates? We're starting to get there, yes. We're talking about flags, right? Colors are
flags. And a slightly naughty ship, perhaps filled with plundering privateers or Pirates—we'll get
into the difference between those, actually, because we might need to. Um, if you were trying
to sneak up on a ship, you might change your flag to that of a friendly nation, and then
when you finally start to battle that ship, you will reveal your true colors and hoist
the actual flag under which you're sailing and fighting. That makes sense. So not necessarily
Pirates, but deceptive Sailors nonetheless. Yeah, it's bad form. Let's see, you are
supposed to fight under the flag that you are actually representing. It reminds me of
the term, um, 'Jolly Roger,' a pirate flag. Um, 'Jolly' here means like, uh, gallant; it's
an older term. It was also paired with other names like a 'jolly Robin' was a handsome
or charming man who was very gallant. Um, and the 'Roger' here is a little bit debated,
but um, sometimes it's associated with, uh, things that are large, like a ship, or um,
I've also seen it referred to as something, um, like 'to roger' was a verb meaning to like, beat
with violence, um, or something along those lines, as I saw. Your different meaning. Now, I
don't know if it does in American slang, but in British slang, 'to roger' something is
rather different; actually, I don't know that one, it's to have sex with it. I mean, I see the
connection there; it makes sense in a lot of senses. To have sex with someone uses a term that
actually means to attack it, which is yeah, kind of disconcerting, I would say. I mean, lots of
words for like, assault, um, refer to imply like, repeated violence, um, same with, you know, uh,
words for like, sexual violence and things too, so, um, that would make sense. And same with
'plunder,' I believe also has—it implies um, forcible taking and things like that, um, though
I think that one ultimately was a word for like, baggage or clothes or household goods, so
'plunder' would be just like the goods you took. Oh, yeah, I see, so from something very
mundane to something very aggressive, yes. One of the big debates in the UK is
what we should call our national flag, so the flag of the United Kingdom, Great Britain,
and Northern Ireland, um, because it colloquially gets called the Union Jack, but a Jack is a
flag flown from a boat, so unless it's being oh, flown from a boat, you should just call it the
Union flag, and some people will be very pedantic about that and will correct others for saying
'Union Jack,' but I think 'Union Jack' has just kind of become a name for it, like a proper
name for it, rather than a description of it, which is, you know, what it would have been at
one point. I think it's—I also like the like, metaphorical idea of the UK as like, a
ship sailing forth into the future. Oh, oh, I like that, someone should
steal that. Yeah, that's nice. Speaking of plunder and such, I was—I've
been surprised to learn in the past that the term 'booty,' as in like, the thing that that
pirates steal, is H, is a very old concept, um, whether you're talking about pirate booty
or a pirate's booty that is its butt or a pirate getting booty that is sex, um, all
these booties are from the same source, uh, implying something you want
and something you take. Um, the Middle English version of this term
was a word for plunder taken from an enemy. Um, and it's from an old French word of the same
meaning, ultimately Germanic though, and it's thought to mean perhaps something that's helpful
or an advantage or something that you exchange. Um, the same sense is also found in the phrase 'to
boot,' as in the emphatic phrase 'to boot.' Like, it implies an advantage. When it comes to bodies
though, 'booty' of course has two senses. It can be like the mild G-rated noun for your rear
end, or it can refer to sex, as in like getting, 'Um, I be getting me some booty tonight.' Exactly.
Oh, oh, so good. No, uh, well, let's get on to Pirates talk since I've already gotten in there.
This is really the fun end of Maritime history, isn't it? Although they shouldn't be fun; these
are horrible. Oh yeah, no, they're terrifying. They're only fun because of pop culture. And
most of the terms that we associate with pirates, especially like the Golden Age of pirates,
are, um, are thanks to pop culture. Booty is a little is one of the older terms, but most
of them, um, most of the terms that we associate with pirates and like, even the pirate accent
that we associate with like Long John Silver, um, came well after the Golden Age of pirates,
which was from the, um, 1650s to like the 1750s, give or take. But Robert Louis Stevenson was the
one who gave us a lot of these terms and some of these ideas, like 'walking the plank.' Um, and
it wasn't even until like the 1950s that, um, Robert Newton, um, played Long John Silver
in an adaptation of 'Treasure Island,' and his Cornish accent and like the 'R' we often
associate with pirates are mostly thanks to him. Do you know who told me that fact about Robert
Newton the first time? Who's that? YouTuber Tom Scott, because I went to University with
him, and back then he used to run the UK leg of international talk like a pirate's day. Ah,
love this. And he had this persona madcap and Tom Scott. He actually got elected as Student
Union president at my University as Madcap Tom, which says an awful lot about the Democratic
process, I'll tell you that. But he first told me in his pirate voice that that be where the voice
be coming from, from Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver. That's the best way to learn
about that. Yeah, it really is. Nice little um, YouTube celebrity name drop as well.
Yeah, a lot do come from 'Treasure Island.' A phrase that is associated—I mean, doesn't come
from Treasure Island, but I think it was made sort of famous. Sometimes they're not like specifically
from Treasure Island, sometimes they were adapted into it, but a lot of times it's a lot of these
words come from pop culture and storytelling that romanticized the Golden Age of pirates in the
century afterward. And Treasure Island is probably one of the more iconic ones of those, that and
like Pirates of Penzance. Oh yeah, of course, yeah, Gilbert and Sullivan. When I think
of Treasure Island, I think of the parrot, Captain Flint, and I think of 'Pieces of
Eight.' Pieces, right? I was trying to decide whether to do the voice or not, and I did it and
I wish—oh, I think it's good. Okay, commit to it, it's about—it's done now, I did it. So, have you
ever thought about where 'Pieces of Eight' comes from as a phrase? Do you know? I have, but I
don't remember. Can you tell me? Yes, I can. So, British colonists operating around North
America and the Caribbean would sometimes run out of currency from back home, so they
would use Spanish currency instead, and the most common Spanish coin was called the Spanish
silver dollar, and it was worth eight Reales, which were the currency from back home
in Spain. So, 'at peace' means a coin, right? So, this was a piece of eight. Although
some people say that referencing 'Pieces of Eight' is that because they got cut up into eight
pieces, because you've got to bear in mind that the value of a coin was directly related to its
weight, so if you divided it into eight pieces, it was worth an eighth of what it was worth. Now,
if you cut up a dollar, uh, it would be worth, I think, precisely nothing, but back then, if
you cut up a piece of eight into eight pieces, you ended up with eight lots of one Reale. If you
got two of those, you would have a quarter of a dollar; you would have two bits. And if I get my
American slang right, two bits means a quarter, right? That makes sense, and that's where
it comes from. Excellent. And that's um, 'Deon' is also Spanish, right? It's um, it
basically means like 'double' something, a coin that was worth twice as much as another Spanish
gold piece. I think it was called the pistole or something like that. Oh, okay. I can imagine it
being French; it sounds like sort of a 'dubl.' Oh yeah, it definitely traveled to English from
French, um, but originally from, from Spanish. You mentioned 'avast' at the top of the hour, um,
and that's actually a Golden Age of Pirates term. It's short for 'hold fast,' basically,
and may have been inspired by the Dutch version of the same term, um, in terms of its
pronunciation. So, I think that one's neat. So, when someone shouts 'avast,' what they're
saying is they're either saying 'stop what you're doing' or 'just keep doing precisely
what you're doing,' basically, 'hold, hold fast, hold steady.' Nowadays, I feel like we just use
it as a general like pirate interjection. Hello, exactly, as I did at the start. Although I do
insist that anyone watching or listening to this, as soon as they hear me say 'avast,' do stop
precisely what they're doing and pay attention. Of course, in Old English, um, the word 'pirate'
didn't exist. It was 'se-scer' and then a pirate ship was a uh, a thief ship. Oh, they've
got lots of lovely terms for the sea in Old English. I love the compounds. Yeah, they
called the sea the 'wæg,' which is the 'whale way' or the 'world water,' which means the
'world water.' That's cool. Yeah, you know, the sea was very important to them as well.
You know, one of only four Old English poems that we have is called 'The Seafarer,' and it
is from the point of view of an old mariner, I suppose, an old seafarer reflecting
on his life and also reflecting on his passage to the afterlife, treating it like
you know, his next great voyage. That's neat. Yeah, the association between English
and the sea goes a very long way back. But to go back to where you've just been
talking about the fact that, you know, Old English didn't have the word 'pirate,'
we should talk about the difference between, you know, a pirate, a privateer, a buccaneer
as well. I mean, a pirate and a privateer, well, basically a privateer is being paid to
do it, right? They've been hired by a country to go and plunder other lands and other
people's boats on behalf of a sovereign. So, Francis Drake is probably the most famous one
who was sailing the high seas on behalf of Queen Elizabeth the First of England. So exciting! The
word 'pirate' itself is basically the Greek word for a pirate, which means someone who attacks. But
a Buccaneer, the swashbuckling pirate type we call a Buccaneer, literally means one who roasts meat
on a boucan, which was a type of grill used by the Tupi people who were Native to what is now Brazil
and whose language blended with European languages during the Golden Age of pirates. Ending, the
word 'Privateer,' which like you said is someone who's employed, a private contractor so to speak,
follows in Buccaneers footsteps and first referred to like a privately owned arm's ship, and shortly
thereafter came to refer to the sailors on it. I see. Buccaneer as well, that's a word
that's basically specific to the Caribbean, but there's also a word specific to
pirates operating in the Mediterranean, that's Corsair, which comes from a very
specific period, a very tense period between the sort of Muslims of the Mediterranean
and the Christians of the Mediterranean, and the fact that they would clash on the high
seas as well. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word Corsair is the style of
that ship, which I think is just beautiful, but also looks very classically PIR. I wonder,
I would have to look this up, I wonder if it's related to the word Corsica, it seems too
similar to not be, that would make sense. There's also swashbuckler, wasn't specifically
associated with seafaring types initially. In the 1500s, it meant any swagger fighter who carries
a sword, with the word 'swash' referring to the heavy blow of a weapon and a shield or a buckler
on the other end. So, you're a sword and shield holder, but it was associated with bombastic
types who made their whole identity about being military and soldier types, so sort of in
the same vein as like chauvinists later. So, it's violent but befitting. Yeah, that's something
that we're coming across quite a lot here, isn't it, 'landlubber?' That's a pirate favorite,
I love this one. I didn't know that you could be any other sort of lubber until I looked this one
up, you could be any kind of lubber. That's right! It's a lot of people, and I think that I used
to assume that it was a weird pronunciation of 'lover,' like 'landlover,' yeah, or 'liver,'
maybe, 'landliver,' right? But instead, it's referring to somebody who's large or clumsy
or unintelligent or idle. That 'lover' part, yeah, is that right? That's right, and it was
a term that primarily was used to describe lazy monks. You could be an Abbey lubber, right,
which was the laziest monk in the Abbey, or you could play the lubber, which was an idiom
from, I don't know, 500, 600 years ago. Yeah, so what you're saying is that a lubber didn't
lazily love on land exclusively but could lazily love basically anywhere, yes, very good.
There's also a term, 'lubberwort,' which was a fictional laziness-inducing plant, and there
was 'lubberland,' a mythical land of pleasant idleness, similar to like the Big Rock Candy
Mountain that we hear of in folk songs today. That's great! So I need to get myself
some Lubberwort. I think that might just be called cannabis these days.
Speaking of breaking things into pieces, 'shiver me timbers' wasn't really a thing
that people said, but 'shiver' did show up in nautical contexts because it refers to a
small piece or fragment or splinter of something, specifically a ship that was smashed to pieces.
So, 'shiver me' or 'shiver my timbers' refers to the splintering of wooden ships upon rough
seas. Ah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you say it wasn't really said, is that another
one of those ones that was from Treasure Island or something like that? I believe so,
yes, it's Long John Silver's phrasing. Oh yes, in fact, he specifically says so, 'said
he, here's Jim Hawkins: "Shiver my timbers," dropped in, like, "and well come," I take that
friendly.' It's amazing how much one book has influenced our idea of piracy. It also appeared
a little bit earlier. I missed a reference, a 1795 reference in a publication called
'Tomahawk or censor General.' It says, 'Peace! shiver my timbers! what a noise ye
make! ye seem to be fonder of peace than ye be of quiet.' Oh, that's quite the burn. It
is. Was it again? 'Fonder of peace than you be of quiet.' Basically, like, shut up.
I like that. I'm going to use that one. Can I talk about poop? Oh, please.
Poop deck always raised a snigger. Uh, is to raise a snigger? Do you know what
the poop deck actually is? Tell me. So, the poop is the frontmost part of a boat, so that
means it's at the bow. That's what we've learned, right? And not only could you have a poop deck,
but basically anything that is at the front of a boat could be referred to as a poop something.
So, in the past, there's been a poop rail, a poop sail, a poop ladder, a poop lantern, and
even a poop ornament, which was a rather cruel term for a useless apprentice. Huh, I would
think it would be a word for a figurehead, but that's funny. No, exactly. I mean, I could
only find, so I thought, 'Oh, that must be exactly the thing that you stick at the front. Must be
the poop ornament.' But no, couldn't find any references to an actual part of the ship that
is a poop ornament, only snide references to low-performing apprentices who were poop ornaments
who essentially may as well have been inanimate. Okay, but why should we call the front of the ship
the poop? Ah, etymology search, poop. Oh no, it's not the first sort of poop that comes up. I don't
see any good reason aside from the fact that it's from the Latin 'popus.' It's not from the Latin
'poopers' really. P-P-P-I-S, which was also a word for, interestingly, the stern of a ship. That's
not very helpful, is it? No, can't be consistent on board these ships. It's as if they were all
drunk or three sheets to the wind, by the way, another nautical idiom. Yeah, fabulous. Wait,
hang on. So, is that when you like, if you want to go really fast or if you're out of control,
you release three sails or something like that? Makes a lot of sense to think that, doesn't it? It
makes sense to think that a sheet would be a sail, but a sheet on a ship actually isn't a sail, it's
a rope. Interesting. So, if you had three ropes to the wind, that was three sails that weren't doing
their job in supporting the sails in the way that they're supposed to, right? So, it was a certain
level of chaos created by having three sheets to the wind. You wouldn't really be in control, as
a drunken sailor might not be. That makes sense. And another term that's associated with pirates is
'scalawag' or 'scallywag,' depending on who says this. This isn't specifically pirate-oriented
and it comes much later than the Golden Age of pirates, probably never used by a real pirate of
the eyepatch and peg leg variety. And its origin isn't 100% certain, but it's most likely
a combination of the Germanic word 'wag' and the Scottish word 'scall.' Just like today,
'wag' referred to like a back-and-forth motion, just like a dog's tail or a wagging tongue.
Um, but it also meant like wavering or lacking in steadfastness, so someone who is a
wag was a rascally disreputable type or sometimes a mischievous child. A clock with a
pendulum was also called a wag at the walls, and someone destined to swing from the gallows
was a wag-halter, wag-halter, right? Isn't that interesting? The 'scalla' portion of 'scalawag'
may come from 'Scalloway,' one of Scotland's Shetland Islands, and in the 1800s, many
of the poor people in Scalloway traveled to America looking for work, and they were
sometimes called 'scalawags,' the 'wag' ending because they were lower class and assumed to be
disreputable in the same way that we stereotype and discriminate against immigrants today. Yeah,
we still have the word 'scall' as English slang, and it's not very nice, right? That would
make sense, not one that we use over here, but we still associate 'scalla' with pirates,
and then over time, it just became a word for any disreputable person, and it was, in the American
South, associated with white people who opposed the Confederacy and supported racial equality,
which nowadays, we, outside of that context, those are the good guys. So maybe a good
thing to be a 'scalawag' in that context. Yeah, it's interesting that what you were saying
about the 'wag' part there and it being sort of to do with wavering and such because actually,
subscribers to my newsletter will already know this, but I recently learned that the 'wave' that
we do with our hand and the waves of the sea, those two words etymologically are not related.
They're not the same, right? So the old way of describing a wave on water was a 'war,' w-a-r, but
the pronunciation and the spelling was influenced by the wave of a hand or the wave of anything,
you know, something that's doing an oscillating motion. And so the word actually turned into
'wave,' but before that, it was 'war,' and yeah, they're not related, but the wave of a hand
is related to the waggle of a dog's tail, for example, and it's this oscillating motion, so
you can see why those two ideas got confounded, right? Because if a wave is doing anything,
it's kind of oscillating, it's certainly moving. Do you think that um, 'war' term, do
you think that's maybe imitative of maybe the sound of waves or the
motion of them? Yeah, could be. Yeah, I don't know if it's classically
associated with pirates, but I think in the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' series, a
lot of viewers associated 'savvy' with, as like a pirate term, and it is from around
the time of the Golden Age of pirates, and it was a slangy adaptation of the French
'savoir,' or 'to know,' yeah. So like, it's sort of like saying, you know, my
mom sometimes used the word 'savvy' to describe someone who's kind of in the know,
yeah, somebody who's smart, same deal. Yeah, who knows? On a previous episode, we also
talked about 'ahoy' in the context of the belt telephone. I believe you also addressed where
it originally came from, right? Yeah, we talked about how it was from Dutch, just the Dutch word
'aoy,' salute to Dutch pirates then for giving us, gifting us, some of these words. So we've sailed
well into the world of pirate and nautical terms, uh, what should we close out with? I
think it makes an awful lot of sense to finish with the nautical idiom 'the bitter
end.' Absolutely, this is one that I only just learned from a video I watched on the
internet. I'll post a link to it down below, and they said in this video that I've just
mentioned that 'the bitter end' comes from the fact that ropes would be tied at one
end on the boat to something called a 'bit,' and so as you were pulling the rope through, once
you got to the end where the bit was, the bit end, it means you were running out of rope, and yeah,
you were near the end of the line, I would say. So is it unrelated to the term 'bitter' as in
taste? It would appear so. So that means that it might actually be a sort of folk etymology, I
suppose. People have infused that phrase with the sense of bitter taste or a bittersweet experience.
Yeah, until I watched this video that I've just mentioned, I thought the same thing. I thought,
'We're getting to the end and we're bitter about it.' No bitterness here though as we come to
the end of this edition of 'Words Unravelled.' Thanks a lot for being with us. We wish you
smooth sailing in your etymological adventures.
