Why are distances at sea measured in knots? In the 1500s, sailors would drop a chip log off the side of the boat and let out the rope for about thirty seconds, counting how many knots on the rope went out. Eventually, one knot came to mean one nautical mile per hour. Incidentally, this same log gave us logbook, weblog, and ultimately, blog. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sea Knots”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Nate. I’m here with my sister Lydia.
I’m Nate and Lydia. Welcome to the show.
Hi, guys.
Where are you calling from?
We’re calling from my sister’s school in Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston, Massachusetts.
Welcome to the show.
How can we help?
Lydia, do you want to explain the question?
Yeah, so I was looking at the word knots, as in the speed of a boat, the other day, and I was wondering, I know it had something to do with nautical miles, but it wasn’t spelled like nautical, so I was wondering where the word came from.
Knots, K-N-O-T-S versus nautical.
So like the speed of a boat then.
Right.
Do you have any experience with boats yourself?
Not really, but my brother sails.
Yeah, and I seem to remember some story. I can’t remember what term it went with. If it was with knots or I thought maybe it was with leagues. I’m not sure where that comes from, but about tying physical knots on a rope.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
There’s no etymological relationship between knots and nautical miles, for one thing. So even though they sound alike, they’re completely different words.
But you’re right. Using knots in a rope to reckon the speed of a boat or a ship has gone back to, gosh, I think the 1500s. And it’s what you described. They had what they called a chip log or a common log that was tied to a long rope that had knots at regular intervals.
And one sailor would drop the ship log over the side of the boat. And then the vessel would keep moving. And they would let out the rope with the knots in it. And they would time it for, oh, 30 seconds or so. And, of course, the log would be floating in the water. And they would stop it and count up the knots that had stretched out between the log and the ship as the ship kept moving away.
So ultimately, the word knot became a unit of speed, a measure of speed, and one knot equals one nautical mile per hour. But, you know, what I think is really cool about this, too, is the fact that this log that had a special shape so that it would float in the water correctly and help measure gave the name to a logbook where you recorded those measurements and then gave us the term log as in captain’s log or weblog, which became blog.
So the old log floating in the water eventually ended up in the blogosphere. How crazy is that?
Very interesting.
So knot, K-N-O-T, actually originally referred to a real knot in a rope.
Yeah.
How about that? I never knew that myself.
Do you know anything about the term league, as in like 20,000 leagues under the sea? Or is that totally unrelated?
I know something about the Justice League.
No.
Yeah, those are two different leagues, actually. The league, like the Major League Baseball League, is a completely different word, even though they’re spelled exactly the same way.
I think league just comes from an old Latin word that came to us through French that means a certain measurement. And I think it’s about three miles. And I remember the light bulb going off in my head when I realized that 20,000 leagues under the sea isn’t 20,000 leagues down. Did you know that?
No.
Because the Earth would have to be something like six times bigger if it was going to be 20,000 leagues under the sea.
Oh, so it just meant they traveled that distance under the sea, but it wasn’t straight down.
Exactly.
It’s around the Earth under the sea. That was a big light bulb for me.
I have one of those now myself.
We’re learning a lot today.
Excellent.
All right. Well, thank you for calling. We really appreciate it, and good luck in school, all right?
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, guys.
Okay, bye.
Bye, Lydia.
Bye.
Bye.
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