The rate at which the string was payed out as the ship moved away from the stationary log was measured by counting how long it took between knots in the string. An extra verse was also added to the beginning of the stage version, to tell the story of when Grandpa sailed out from Liverpool. Forget your lefts and rights, British Rowing can officially confirm that ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ are the terms to use when rowing!

A popular story derives the word as an acronym from "port out, starboard home", referring to 19th-century first-class cabins on ocean liners, which were shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east (e. For example, the Amber Alert missing-child program was named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 1996. The offshoots from French tribordo and babordo were largely, and only, used in adventure novels of the nineteenth century translated from French. Because they don’t want to walk the plank, sailors use the words port and starboard to make sure they know which direction the captain is talking about.

Austin’s (1903), we find: ‘That waistcoat … being quite the most push thing of the sort in Cambridge. World Wide Words tries to record at least a part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech. We’re suckers for a really good story — it’s one way we make sense of the world around us and so turn the unfamiliar (which is much the same thing as the dangerous and the frightening) into the known and the comfortable. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology.

That means that all coaching materials will now refer to port and starboard as standardised terminology, and the terms could eventually be written onto blade shafts across the country.A large part of this book retells such mythic tales and also tries to find and explain the true stories behind them. Oliver Tearle is the author of The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History , available now from Michael O’Mara Books. The left and right sides of the boat itself don’t change, though, so port and starboard will refer to the same direction, no matter which direction you’re facing on a boat.

You may become even a little possessive about it, so that somebody who attempts to argue differently seems to be telling you that you’re a fool and that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Many phrases that have been adopted into everyday use originate from seafaring - in particular from the days of sail. Michael Quinion's World Wide Words is the web authority on English etymology (word origins) and usage-come here for definitive information on some of the most interesting, amusing and downright weird words and phrases in the English language.We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. So, in conclusion, we cannot say for sure where the word ‘posh’ originated, but we can discount the ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’ acronym theory with pretty much 100% certainty. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Rowing is the nation’s most continuously successful Olympic sport, having won a gold medal in every Olympic Games since 1984, and has won six Paralympic golds since the sport was introduced to the Paralympic Games programme in 2008. Similarly, the distress signal SOS is often believed to be an abbreviation for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" but was chosen because it has a simple and unmistakable Morse code representation– three dots, three dashes, three dots, sent without any pauses between characters.