The life of the sailor offers a fertile field for the sprouting of neologisms. The seaman’s world is still greatly different from the land world; and a hundred years ago, in the heyday of the sailing ships, an American might spend his life speaking nothing but the language of the sea—a complete language satisfying all the needs of his seafaring career, but one totally incomprehensible to the landsman. Now that the clipper ships have vanished from the oceans, that language—although some figurative terms have passed into current English—is for the most part as dead to us as the “canting talk” of Elizabethan footpads.

The strongest survival of sea slang from the windjammer era may be looked for today in the lingo of the naval service. The Navy has always been noted for conservatism and respect for tradition; and hence it is not surprising that many survivals from the days of sail may be found in the sea-talk of the American Navy today. This paper attempts to show to what extent the sea slang of a century ago has survived to the present day in the American naval service.

Source of Slang Terms

The best single source from which to gather a list of slang terms in the American Navy a hundred years ago is judged to be Herman Melville’s autobiographical narrative, White-Jacket: The World in a Man-of-War.

This volume, published in 1850, is an account of a passage made by Melville in 1844-45 in an American man-o’-war from Honolulu around the Horn to New York. He served as an enlisted man in the frigate United States (which he rechristens the Neversink). The book, although seldom read by landsmen, is the most factual, and least romantic and mystical, of any writings by the author of Moby Dick, and has long been considered a classic by navy men and by students of naval history. Although many of the most exciting episodes have been shown to be based more upon fancy than fact,2 and although the book was not, as has been supposed, the direct cause of official abolition of flogging as a punishment in the American Navy, its publication brought to light many abuses practiced by tyrannical officers upon hapless foremast hands; and for generations White- Jacket has been considered the best account of .navy life ever written by an enlisted seaman.

Melville, as a man of letters, was naturally much interested in the lingo used by his shipmates, and the volume is a rich storehouse of naval words and phrases, as well as a treasury of naval customs and traditions. The author italicizes many words as an indication that he realizes that these are not part of the accepted language, and this habit is useful in enabling one to pick out unconventional usages. However, this treatment is not followed in every instance, and many speech variations which are not printed in italics must be considered slang. Therefore, it has been necessary to make a line-by-line examination of the book in order to prepare the basic list of slang terms for historical study.

The first difficulty that arises in this study is the adoption of a method of distinguishing naval slang from other special linguistic forms.

Naval versus Shore Slang

The distinction between terms that were born on the sea and those that may be found on land and sea alike is not hard to make. The dividing line between saltwater words and their shore counterparts is almost as clear as the tidemark on a beach. The landsman unacquainted with the sea simply does not know how to use the sea terms, except those few figurative phrases which have “come ashore” and which are used without a recollection of their salty origin. On the other hand, the sailor often uses shore slang, but its use, as he is well aware, does not thereby mark him as a sailor. In the study that follows, ordinary shore slang of Melville’s day (for example, “Joe Miller” as synonymous with “jest”) has not been included, because the sea usage differs in no way from shore usage and therefore offers no special contribution to naval parlance.

Naval versus Other Types of Sea Slang

Naval slang, for the purposes of this study, is that body of slang terms found in the past in common use in the United States Navy. This differs, it is true, from slang used by other seafaring groups, such as fishermen, whalers, merchant seamen, yachtsmen, and the like; but whenever the slang of these other groups has attained acceptance by American navy men, it has been considered as part of naval slang and included for study.

Slang versus Other Variations

Much more baffling is the task of distinguishing “slang” from other variations —such as “technical jargon,” “dialect,” and “allusions”—found in the lingo of the service.

The first distinction that must be made, of course, is the fact that a slang term is a variant on a standard term; that is, it is a nickname for another word or phrase. For instance, the title “first lieutenant” is the proper designation of this officer; when he is called the “first luff,” the speaker is obviously indulging in a slang synonym.

The ordinary dictionary definitions of slang do not seem precise enough to serve as a guide for rejecting one term and including another in our list. For example, the ephemeral nature of slang has been considered to be one of its identification marks. Slang is thus thought of as a continually shifting body of neologisms; of these, most are destined to be worn out quickly by overuse, and the remainder, recognized to be good contributions supplying a lack in standard speech, pass into the common language and therefore cease to be slang. However, it will be pointed out that many slang terms have existed for many years without suffering either of these two fates; they are recognized as slang, and persist as slang variants. This is especially true of a number of naval terms which have endured for many years without being accepted into the formal body of the language. For at least a hundred years, to keep to our example, “first luff” has been a naval slang variant for “first lieutenant.” It is still used, and is still slang. For this reason, one cannot distinguish a slang term by noting its period of service or by attempting to forecast its probable future life.

Another view of the nature of slang is that which associates it with impropriety or vulgarity. Ambrose Bierce once said: “Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage cans on their way to the dumps.” This seems a rather harsh dictum. Many people with full appreciation of literary values use slang, knowingly and with a full sense of its function. It therefore seems impossible to distinguish slang by examining the sort of person who uses it.

Slang is often created by the process of abbreviation, and many shortened forms can be found in naval slang. It should be noted, however, that contrary to a common belief, slang is not necessarily an attempt to add the quality of brevity or terseness to the ordinary speech. Many slang terms are much more lengthy than the standard word, and are used because their sesquipedalian nature adds an element of humor or mock-seriousness. This observation is particularly important in distinguishing naval slang from a closely comparable body of words and phrases which are classified below as “technical jargon.”

One should not be confused by the false idea that all naval phrases that are picturesque are necessarily slang. Many technical terms of the sea are highly imaginative, such as “dolphin striker” (a vertical spar supporting the jib-boom stay), or “round robin” (a letter written in the mutineering days which was signed by all the men in a circle so that no one of them could be marked as the “ringleader”). However, these two terms are the accepted names for particular things rather than slang nicknames, and as such, although highly fanciful, are not to be considered as slang variants.

It seems to the writer that the most valid method of distinguishing slang from other speech variants is by examining the purpose for which the locution is used.3 The speaker chooses the slang term not because it is necessarily better, but because it is different. The motives for this choice are commonly those of rebellion or irreverence for authority and propriety; of expressing a sportive mood; of communicating thought in secret guise (as for instance by the argot of thieves and other criminals); or of indicating that the speaker is a member of a particular confraternity or vocational or social group.

It can be remarked that most of these purposes existed strongly in the mind of the enlisted seaman in the naval service. The old-time sailor was at every minute of his day under the surveillance of vigilant and sometimes iron-handed authorities. It was impossible for him to find privacy to express his thoughts freely, and therefore he developed a cant that would enable him to speak his mind to his fellows in a form that would not bring down the wrath of his officers. This slang of the foc’s’le thus combined the two motives of rebellion and of secrecy. Another strong motive for using slang was to mark the user as a navy man, and an “old-timer” at that. He used navy talk so that no one would mistake him for a landlubber, and, if possible, so that he would be immediately accepted by other sailors as a real “shellback” rather than a callow “greenhorn.” In his desire to set himself apart from despised landsmen, he would frequently speak in more salty terms ashore than when on board ship. And when in sportive mood, he would indulge his propensity, old as the Odyssey, for coining expressive nicknames for everything and everybody. All these traits intensified the ordinary influences leading to the use of slang, with the result that naval speech is extremely rich in imaginative slang words and phrases.

Taking all these considerations into account, slang may be considered, for the purposes of this paper, as a body of nicknames for established words, which are used as variations for purposes not primarily concerned with mere communication.

Using this definition, it will now be possible to eliminate from the study other forms of language variation that are. to be found in the speech of naval men a century ago.

The most troublesome cause of difficulty in choosing the terms to be studied has been to distinguish between slang and the “technical jargon” of the sea. This jargon is the body of special terms used to denote acts and things peculiar to the needs of the seaman’s vocation. Most of these terms are names of things which are not found in shore vocations, or are seagoing counterparts of acts or objects as used in the particular nautical sense. In general, they comprise the names of parts of vessels and terms used in operating them; special terms used to describe weather, currents, and seascapes; and terms dealing with naval ratings, equipment, customs, forms, and institutions. In brief, the technical jargon used by naval men is the accepted standard vocational terminology of the sea.

It should be repeated that the function of technical jargon is opposed to that of slang, in that the use of the technical term is rooted in the desire to be clearly comprehended, without dangerous ambiguity. At sea there has always been a desperate necessity to be immediately understood. Orders are given and acknowledged in a standard form; the words used are chosen by a long process of selection to express in briefest but most comprehensible form the all-important idea. It is for this reason that, as W. Clark Russell has said, “Sailors love short words.” In time of danger or rapid action, the officer or man who indulged in a slang word or phrase that might confuse his shipmates would be severely dealt with. The use of slang, therefore, is ordinarily reserved for times when the users are relaxed and off duty.

Occasionally one finds a technical term of the sea which, when used for the purpose of being racily expressive rather than merely clear, forms the basis of a slang word or phrase. An example of this is found in the technical term, “the number of one’s mess.” This phrase denotes a particular number which was assigned to each seaman. However, when it is said that a man “has lost the number of his mess,” the phrase cannot be taken literally, but rather as a slang variation on the standard verb “to die.”

Technical jargon is the type of locution which is most easily confused with slang. Other locutions found in naval literature are more quickly defined and recognized.

“Dialect” is a variation resulting from environmental effects such as differences in age, locality, education, and native tongue. The influence of localities is noticeable when an author shows, for example, a New England seaman conversing with a Southerner. Differences in education, or “social dialect,” might appear when comparing the speech of the foc’s’le with that of the quarter-deck, although this difference was not highly marked in the days when many officers rose from the ranks (or, in naval parlance, “came in at the hawse holes”). Foreign intrusions in English naval language are not uncommon, but innovations from Scandinavian, Dutch, German, or other tongues are usually clearly identifiable, and few of them have been employed as slang.

“Allusions” are occasionally found in naval narratives, especially in Melville’s book. These may be obscure, but do not differ intrinsically from any other sort of literary allusion. There are a part of the personal style of the author, and cannot properly be considered as slang.

Sea Slang in Melville’s Day

Words and phrases discovered in Melville’s White-Jacket which qualify as naval slang run to 117 in number. They will be listed and explained here, and the list will serve as a basis for an estimate of the proportion that has survived to the present day in naval usage.

A No. 1.—This originated from “A1 at Lloyds,” and was based on the classification used by marine underwriters. The letter refers to the condition of the hull, and the number to the condition of ship fittings and spars. As a general slang term meaning “first-class/’ the phrase was used by Dickens in 1837. Now standard English.

anchor button.—This insignia was used by Melville to personify the rank of officer, in contrast with the position of common seaman. Compare with “lined- frock,” below.

andrew miller.—The Royal Navy. As early as 1813, “Andrew Miller’s lugger” was smugglers’ slang for a king’s ship. In current naval usage, “Andrew” still designates the British Navy.

balker.—One who accepted a sum of money in place of his government grog ration.

banyan day.—“When,” adds Melville, “there is nothing but beef and bread.” The long accepted meaning of this term, however, is a day on which the sailors eat no meat; it comes from the Banians, a Hindu caste of traders who eat no flesh, and is found in sea vocabulary as early as 1609, in the writings of Samuel Purchas.

blue peter.—A blue flag with a white center, hoisted to denote the immediate departure of a vessel. “To hoist the Blue Peter” is still used to signify readiness to depart.

bone-polisher.—One who wields a cat-o’-nine-tails.

bougee (more properly, burgee).—A swallow-tailed flag denoting the rank of commodore, a rank now obsolete in the United States Navy.

bouse.—To drink; derived from “booze” (1567). Used by Melville in a punning sense, as it is identical with the nautical term “to bouse,” meaning to haul on. Compare “nip at the cable” and “swig at the halyards,” below.

brig.—Punishment cells. Still in common naval use.

broken.—Disrated; reduced to the ranks. The present-day variant for this term in army and navy usage is “busted.”

bumboat.—A boat carrying provisions or merchandise to ships lying in port or offshore. Now standard English.

bungs.—A ship’s cooper.

caboose.—Kitchen. “Every man’s hat [is] his caboose.” In nautical use, “caboose” was a cooking-galley on deck.

cape horn fever.—Malingering in rough weather.

cat.—A cat-o’-nine-tails; or, to flog with a “cat.” Now standard English.

chock-a-block.—Crowded; tight.

chummy.—Variant of “chum.” Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, states that this was perhaps coined by W. S. Gilbert, in the Bab Ballads, in 1864; but Melville’s use antedates this by 20 years. Melville had a good ear for cockney slang, as witness several of his characters in Omoo, and it is likely that this term was heard in cockney or Australian slang of his day.

coach-whip or long- pennant.—Long, narrow pennant flown at the masthead of a war vessel. Partridge dates the appearance of “coach-whip” from about 1890.

cold as Blue Flujin.—“Where,” continues Melville, “sailors say fire freezes.” Extremely cold.

colt.—To hit with a rope’s end. Now standard English.

comes in at the hawse holes.—Said of an officer who rises from the forecastle. The phrase is sometimes heard in naval parlance today.

conch-shell.—Nose.

cook of the mess.—Actually not a cook, but a seaman who acted as a steward for his mess, to serve rations and take charge of stores.

crimp.—One who entraps others into sea service. “To crimp,” in the sense of to play foul, dates from the cant of the seventeenth century; and the term has been standard English for a long time.

cut and run.—To decamp, depart hurriedly. The origin of this common figurative term, which has long passed into standard English, is to be found in the sailing-ship practice of fastening bunts with yarn instead of gaskets if a hurried departure was contemplated. It was then possible to cut the yarn quickly and run the vessel to sea.

damn-my-eyes tar.—One who poses ashore as more sailorly than many a better seaman. Melville remarks: “The men who talk the most sailor lingo are the least sailor-like in reality.”

darbies; double darbies.—Handcuffs. This colloquialism dates from the seventeenth century.

deadeye.—A term of reproach, suggesting dull inactivity. A deadeye is a sheaveless block used in standing rigging of a ship.

death-board.—A plank used for holding the corpse in burials at sea.

dock-loper.—A loafer along the water front; a “wharf rat.”

duff.—A sea pudding of flour and raisins boiled in a bag.

duff day.—A day, usually Sunday, when duff appeared on the ship’s bill of fare.

dunderfunk.—A sort of sea-pie made of broken biscuit and molasses. Other names given by Melville for this delicacy in its various forms are scouse, lobscouse, soft-tack, soft-tommy, skillagalee, burgoo, doughboys, lob-dominion, and dog’s-body.

dungeree trousers.—Garments made of a coarse blue cloth named for a Bombay suburb. Now standard English.

fancy men.—Informers. “A set of sly, knavish foxes among the crew . . . presumed to be regarded with high favor by some of the officers.”

first luff.—First lieutenant. This derives from a clipped rendering of the British pronunciation (“leftenant”), and was probably confused with the common sea term “luff.”

floating hells.—Man-o’-war vessels.

forward officers.—Petty officers, such as boatswain, gunner, etc.

gang.—“A gang of thieves.” This term, now standard English, was slang when Melville used it.

greenhorn.—A new or inexperienced seaman. Now standard English.

grego.—Defined by Melville as “a sailor’s surtout.” A heavy jacket or greatcoat.

grog.—A mixture of spirits and water. “In 1740, on a cruise to the West Indies, where his fleet captured Porto Bello, Admiral Vernon had rum and water issued to the crew, in the belief that the mixture would act as a preventative against tropical fever. The Admiral was known to his sailors as ‘Old Grog,’ due to his habit of wearing a cloak made of coarse silk called grogram, so it was natural enough to call the new drink after its inventor.”—Frederick J. Bell, Room to Swing a Cat. “Grog” is now standard English.

guardo.—Receiving ship. This term may still be heard in naval usage.

guardo-moves.—“Manner of carrying on the duties of a seaman on a man-of- war.”

holystone.—Slabs of sandstone used in cleaning decks. “So called from seamen using them kneeling.”—W. H. Smyth, Sailors’ Word Book.

homeward-bounder.—A long beard. This amusing term is used in Melville’s famous (and probably imaginary) description of the “massacre of the beards,” which was supposed to have taken place shortly before his vessel reached her home port.

horse-marine.—An awkward, lubberly person; one who is as much out of place as a mounted marine would be aboard ship. Now standard English.

hot coppers.—A parched condition of the throat resulting from a drinking bout. This colloquial term was not exclusively nautical.

hurra’s nest.—A state of utter confusion.

in full fig.—In full dress.

keel-hauling.—“A phrase . . . employed by men-of-war’s-men [to] . . . express some signal vengeance upon a personal foe.”

kids.—Containers. Partridge remarks in his Dictionary of Slang: “Generally kiddy. A flat dish wherein sailors measure their ration; nautical (1887).” This date is 40 years later than the time when Melville wrote White-Jacket. This word is usually pronounced “kit,” and probably derived from the same word, meaning an outfit or piece of equipment.

knock off.—To stop work. Now standard English.

Liberty Day.—A day on which some of a ship’s crew are at liberty to go ashore.

lined-frock.—The worsted garment worn by sailors in Melville’s time, and used by him as the personification of a common seaman.

long pennant.—See “coach-whip.”

Lose the number of one's mess.—To die; to be killed. Partridge dates the appearance of this phrase from 1887, 40 years later than Melville’s book.

love curls.—According to Melville, “locks over the ears,” an appealing mode with the nautical dandy.

make a hole in the shot locker.—To die at sea; derived from the custom of using round-shot to weight a corpse for burial.

make sail.—Depart.

manavalins.—Also spelled menavelings, maniv(i)lins, manablins. A nautical term meaning odds and ends of food or other scraps taken as perquisites. All the varieties of “dunderfunk” (see above) were, says Melville, called manavalins.

mast.—“Brought up to the mast,” meaning charged with breach of conduct. Official interviews in the United States Navy were traditionally held at the mainmast on the spar deck.

middles.—Midshipmen. midshipmen’s nuts.—Lumps of broken sea-biscuit too tough for the jaws of the oldsters.

monkey jacket.—A close fitting short jacket, especially an officer’s uniform jacket.

monkey-tail.—A short round lever for training carronades.

muster round the capstan.—General inspection on the first Sunday of the month.

muzzle-lashings.—Beards or whiskers. A play upon the slang term “muzzle” for mouth. In nonfigurative sense, a muzzlelashing was a rope used to lash a gun in position by the muzzle.

nip at the cable.—To drink. Punning term deriving from the nautical practice of “nipping” the anchor cable. Compare “swig at the halyards,” below.
nip-cheese.—Ship’s purser. This term goes back to the eighteenth century, when pursers were popularly supposed to levy tribute on the cheese and other food placed in their custody.

pay creditors with a flying foretopsail—To decamp without settling debts. In a sailing vessel, one of the first preparations for getting under way was to cast loose the foretopsail.

people, the.—The common seamen, in the language of the quarter-deck.

pills.—Surgeon’s steward. When used today, it refers to the pharmacist’s mate.

pipe down.—To be quiet; obviously derived from the boatswain’s signal of dismissal. Most users of the phrase do not recall its nautical origin.

pipes.—Boatswain.

pipe my eye.—To weep; used in this sense as early as 1789 by Charles Dibden, writer of many a well-loved sea ballad. Now obsolete.

plug of pig-tail.—A hair cue. Melville used it in a punning sense; “pigtail” was a popular variety of tobacco.

polish Cape Horn.—To round this stormy cape. “Polish” is used in the slang sense, “to punish” or “to finish off.”

powder-monkey.—A boy who carries powder from magazine to gun. The term, still used today, dates from the seventeenth century.

prayer-book.—A small “holystone” (see above).

professor.—A ship’s schoolmaster. The term in this sense, like the official, is now obsolete in the United States Navy.

purser rigged and parish damned.—Said of a man first donning naval uniform (which was then made by workhouse labor).

ravelings.—Parsimonious fellows. “Men who . . . from their stinginess, procured the name of ravelings.”

red-eye.—Brandy; cheap, fiery whisky.

reefer.—A midshipman. Because, says Smyth, he has to “attend to the tops during the operation of taking in reefs.” The term has fallen into disuse in the United States Navy, perhaps because midshipmen are no longer slender lads handy for reefing the uppermost sails; but the word is still used in the British Merchant Marine to denote sea apprentices.

salt horse.—Salted pork or beef issued as sailor rations. Now standard English.

scoff.—To eat. Nautical slang originating in South Africa.

sea-dandies and silk-sock-gentry.— Slang terms for men of the afterguard, which contained many landsmen useful only for light and least important tasks in working the ship.

sea-lawyer.—An argumentative or scheming sailor, always talking of his real or supposed rights.

serving-mallet boat.—Canal boat. Undoubtedly it was so called because of a fancied resemblance to the shape of a sail- maker’s serving mallet.

shaving day.—One day a week set aside in the old Navy on which men visited the ships’ barbers. ship one’s quarter-deck face.—Said of officers who after a period of leniency or celebration once more resume their habitual severity.

shippy.—Slang variant of “shipmate.” shipshape and Bristol fashion.—In a seamanlike and orderly manner. Now standard English.

skylarking.—Running about the rigging in sport. Melville has the officers ot his vessel give the order: “All hands skylark!” Now standard English, meaning “to frolic boisterously.”

slaughter-house.—Used by Melville to denote the gun-deck abreast of the mainmast; here the enemy would direct his heaviest fire in an attempt to bring down the mast.

slops.—Cheap, ready-made clothing or equipment from “slop-chest” stores on shipboard.

slush.—Fat resulting from boiling meat. It was saved by the cook and later used by the seamen for “slushing” the masts to preserve the finish.

sojer.—Applied to a sailor, this connotes shirking and malingering. It undoubtedly derives from the seaman’s view of the leisurely life of a marine, and is still in common use.

son of a gun.—A phrase that dates from the time when sailors were permitted to take their wives to sea with them. “The ‘sons of guns’ were the children who were actually bom under the broadside guns.” —Frederick J. Bell. Melville defines a true sailor as “bom under a gun, and educated on the bowsprit.”

sons of farmers.—Lubberly seamen. This derisive phrase is dated by Partridge as originating about 1890!

splicing the main brace.—Drinking; serving out a round of grog. Still in common use.

squilgee.—Squeegee, a type of deck mop. Perhaps derived from “squeeze.” Partridge lists “squillagee” as a term for an unpopular seaman.
steady-cook.—A “cook of the mess” (see above) who serves in this capacity during the entire cruise. Melville speaks scathingly also of “steady-sweepers” and “steady-spit-box-musterers.”

swig at the halyards.—To drink deeply. Another punning phrase; “to swig” in nautical usage may also mean to haul on a rope. Compare “nip at the cable.”

swob.—A naval officer. Derived from the officer’s epaulette, which to the sailor’s eye resembled a deck swab.

tar.—Seaman. From “tarpaulin.” Now humorous or poetic.

togs.—Clothing. Melville is quoted in the great Oxford Dictionary as authority for this word, which is still colloquial or jocular.

Tom Coxe’s traverse.—“Up one ladder and down t’other.” Tom Coxe was evidently the paragon of naval shirkers. Partridge lists another saying: “Tom Coxe’s deck duty—three turns around the long-boat and a pull at the scuttlebutt.”

top your boom.—Depart. Obviously related to the sailing maneuver of hauling the spanker boom.

tot.—A tin measure used in issuing grog; hence, a drink of liquor.

twister.—A yam; a tall story. Partridge dates this from about 1870.

whiskerandoes.—Men with beards or whiskers. The epithet may derive from Whiskerando, a character in Sheridan’s play, The Critic.

whistle for a wind.—This superstitious observance is mentioned by many writers. The phrase still smacks of the sailing-ship days.

white mice.—Informers among the crew. See “fancy men,” above.

yarn.—Story. “Often ‘spin a yam.’ From the long process of yam-spinning in the making of ropes and the tales with which sailors often accompany that task.” —Eric Partridge.

Conclusions

What has been the fate of these slang terms used at sea a hundred years ago?

Well, many of them are still with us, doing duty ashore or at sea. Quite a number—about 15 per cent of the list—have “swallowed the anchor” and settled ashore as part of our standard English vocabulary. These include such words as “A No. 1,” “Blue Peter,” “broken,” “bumboat,” “cat,” “colt,” “duff,” “greenhorn,” “grog,” and “skylarking,” and such phrases as “cut and ran,” “shipshape and Bristol fashion,” and “whistle for a wind.”

Study reveals that something like 55 per cent of the list have become as obsolete as the old windjammers on whose decks these terms were first heard. Many of these terms dropped out of the sea vocabulary along about 1890. At that date most of the men in naval service had been trained in sail-driven vessels, which were at this time being quickly replaced by ships of the steam-driven “White Squadron” that opened the era culminating in the superdreadnought fleets of today. The introduction into the naval ranks of many men without previous sea experience has caused the jettisoning of much of the picturesque old lingo that marked the seafaring man of a few generations ago.

However, a surprisingly great number of other terms—about 30 per cent of the list—are still used in the service, and still may be marked as slangy. These include “Andrew Miller,” “brig,” “chock-a-block,” “coach-whip,” “crimp,” “darbies,” “first luff,” “guardo,” “holystone,” “horse-marine,” “keelhauling,” “to lose the number of one’s mess,” “mast,” “middies,” “monkey jacket,” “Pills,” “pipe down,” “Pipes,” “powder-monkeys,” “prayer-book,” “redeye,” “sea-lawyer,” “slops,” “sojer,” “son of a gun,” “splicing the main brace,” “togs,” “tot,” and “yam.” This proportion of slang terms which is still in use and is considered to be colloquial is probably a result of the conservatism of the group that uses the traditional lingo of the sea, and refutes the popular idea that slang is necessarily of an ephemeral nature.

1. This article was submitted in the Prize Essay Contest, 1942

2. See Charles Roberts Anderson, Melville in the South Seas, Chaps. 14-16.

3. This functional definition finds support in a study by one authority, Eric Partridge, who in his monograph, Slang, lists no less than sixteen purposes for which slang has been used in place of standard English.