Mark in Bismarck, North Dakota, spent years as a sailor, and wonders about the term sea painter, meaning “a rope attached to a lifeboat.” Why painter? The word may derive from Middle French pendeur meaning “a kind of rope that...
Channel fever is “the feeling of excitement or restlessness that sailors experience as their ship nears its home port.” This is part of a complete episode.
If a suspect is at large, he is moving about freely. The term at large, which comes to us via French from Latin, refers not to size but to distance. The phrase by and large, meaning “generally” or “on the whole,” derives from...
swallow the anchor v. phr.— «Where you see yourself in five years: We’ll be back on the boat somewhere. I don’t know where. But I think we’ll keep the house and rent it out; this will always be our home port, our land lock—swallowing the...