Mike Booth / Alamy
TA K ING A
BEARING
MEL BARTLETT: Learning the language
“When I use a word,” Humpty
Dumpty said, in rather a scornful
tone, “it means just what I choose
it to mean — neither more nor less.”
The funny thing is that Humpty
Dumpty had a point. We might talk
about ‘the dictionary definition’
of something, but dictionaries are
descriptive, not prescriptive. They
tell us how words are being used
rather than trying to lay down the
law about what they mean.
When I use the word ‘fathom’
for instance, it means 1.8288m,
neither more nor less. I was
vaguely aware that it had started
out as a verb meaning ‘hug’
because it is roughly equal to the
length of an adult’s outstretched
arms – about 6ft – but I was
quite surprised to realise that it
has now evolved back into a verb,
meaning ‘to work something out’.
What set me off on this trawl
trough the dictionary was a rather
tedious account of someone’s epic
voyage, in which he and his crew
spent a disproportionate amount
of time ‘donning’ their lifejackets.
Why, I wondered, did they always
‘don’ their lifejackets? Why didn’t
they just put them on? After all,
no one (surely) talks about donning
a pair of socks. And how come they
never ‘doffed’ them?
Why does putting on a lifejacket
require such a very specific word
that we almost never use for
anything else, I wonder?It gets curiouser and curiouser
when you think how many perfectly
good words seem to be falling out
of favour as they are displaced by
less-specific alternatives.
One that winds me up every
time is ‘line’ as a synonym for ‘rope’.
Maybe if you spell harbour as
‘harbor’ and leave red conical
buoys to starboard when entering
one, it is. But in English, I was taught
‘line’ is much smaller than ‘rope’.
Mind you, I’m not that keen
on ‘rope’ either. ‘Rope’ to me,
is wrapped round reels in the
chandler’s. As soon as it’s on a
boat, it becomes something else –
a warp, a hawser or cable, a fall or
a halyard, depending on the job it
is intended to do. And when it’s put
to work, it changes its name again.
Something that left the
chandlery as ‘rope’ and became
a ‘warp’ when it was put in the
locker might become a headrope,
or a headspring or backspring.
The funny thing is that people
involved in other hobbies take
great pride in using professional
language. Golfers talk about
birdies and bogies, while amateur
actors discuss flats, floods and
followspots. In almost every other
recreational activity, it seems, using
the right words is all part of the fun.
So, is it pedantic to flinch when
I overhear a skipper asking his
crew to ‘undo the bow line’ when
he means ‘let go of the headrope’?Humpty Dumpty
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