Tag Archives: definitions

Archaic Definitions of the Week – The Horse in the Snow

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publishingThis week, a double gift for Christmas!

HORSE … a thick rope, extended in a perpendicular direction near the fore or after-side of a mast, for the purpose of hoisting or extending some sail thereon. When it is fixed before a mast, it is calculated for the use of a sail called the square-sail … When the horse is placed abaft or behind a mast, it is intended for the try-sail of a snow, and is accordingly very rarely fixed in this position, except in those sloops of war which occasionally assume the form of snows, in order to deceive the enemy.

SNOW, (senau, Fr.) is generally the largest of all two-masted vessels employed by Europeans, and the most convenient for navigation … When the sloops of war are rigged as snows, they are furnished with a horse, which answers the purpose of the try-sail-mast, the fore-part of the sail being attached by rings to the said horse, in different parts of its heighth.

– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).

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Archaic Definition of the Week Two'Fer! – Quillon and Quoin

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publishingSince I ran out of the popular weekly Amalgam poems last week, I will compensate by offering two Archaic Definitions:

quillon One of the two arms that form a sword’s cross-guard, the device that protects the swordsman’s hand.

quoin A wooden edge with a handle at the thick end used to adjust the elevation of a [ship’s] gun.

– A Sea of Words : A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales (Third Edition) by Dean King with John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes.

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Archaic Definition of the Week – Picus (Woodpecker)

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publishingThe PICUS (woodpecker) gets its name from Picus the son of Saturn, because he used the creature in auguries. For they say that this bird is something of a soothsayer by the following evidence, viz: in the trees on which it builds its nest, one cannot stick a nail where it sat, or anything else that remains fixed for a long time, without its falling out at once.

– The Book of Beasts : Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century Made and Edited by T. H. White (1954).

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Archaic Definition of the Week – Ewer

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publishingewer __ A large water pitcher with a wide lip.

HISTORIC. Before internal plumbing, the common bedroom lavatory consisted of a ewer, a large wash basin, and a floor receptacle into which used wash water could be poured. (Or the water was often thrown out the window.)

– A Second Browser’s Dictionary and Native’s Guide to the Unknown American Language by John Ciardi (1983).

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