Pirate Dictionary

[Barbados Sam]

LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG: A sailor found drunk on board was ordered to fashion a cat o' nine tails or "make a rod for his own back", which would then be kept in a leather bag. When sailors "let the cat out of the bag" they were in for misfortune. The Royal Navy's cat-o-nine-tails was kept in a red bag, and not removed until the offender was safely secured to the gratings and there was no possibility of reprieve.

[Barbados Sam]

LONG SHOT: Cannon had no sights, and could not be traversed right and left, and there was only small up-down adjustments, which could be negated by the movement of waves. Also, each ball was slightly different and the gunpowder charges varied. Cannon balls were most likely to hit and cause real damage with a maximum effective range of 200 to 500 feet. Thus very few "long shots" were effective, and the term came to be used by gamblers.

[Barbados Sam]

LOOSE CANNON: An unsecured cannon in a storm could do untold damage to men and the ship as it rolled about. The term now means an unorthodox person who can cause potential damage.

[Barbados Sam]

TO MAKE BOTH ENDS MEET: Dating from at least the 17th century, the habit of splicing two pieces of rope to make a longer rope, and thus not necessitating the purchase of a longer rope. Thus this economical chore has passed into modern terminology.

[Daniel]

Don't forget "mainstay." Originally, the line that supports the mainmast and keeps it from falling over backward. Now, the main support of any person or organization.

[John Maddox Roberts]

A circular cannonball rack that went around a mast was called a "monkey." The balls sat right at their midpoints to make them more secure, so the hole in the monkey was only a millimeter or two smaller than the circumference of the cannonball. In cold weather iron shrinks faster than brass, so that if the monkey is brass, in Arctic weather the cannonballs can shrink enough to fall through and roll around on deck. When that happens it's COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE THE BALLS OFF A BRASS MONKEY.

[Barbados Sam]

MIND YOUR P's and Q's: Sailors received credit at quayside taverns until they were paid. In these blissful premetrification days, beer was sold in pints and quarts. The innkeeper kept a record of P's and Q's for each debtor, and ensured that they were entered on his account. Some tavern owners would put extra ticks in the pints and quarts columns if they thought the seaman was drunk. Thus it was important to be mindful of your P's and Q's.

[Barbados Sam]

PIPE DOWN: Sailors said this to someone who was talking too much. It's derivation is that the last noise at night was the boatswain's pipe, the signal for silence on the mess-decks and lights out.

[Fox]

I don't want to be the resident A-hole, but I have doubts about some of Breverton's assertions. Nowadays we are so obsessed with finding twee little explanations for things that we don't need to indulge in such pointless exercises as actually proving our twee little explanations. Some of them are undoubtedly correct, but there are a huge number of basically made-up explanations for things - which often don't even match the accepted meaning of the word or phrase anyway!

Be that as it may, freezing balls off a brass monkey has absolutely nothing to do with canon balls or ships, it's a myth. Sorry, felt compelled to point that out.

[LongTom]

I claim that the meaning of "shiver" in "shiver me timbers" is not the more modern meaning "to vibrate" but the more archaic meaning "to break" or "to smash to slivers (also called shivers)." Using this sense, "shiver me timbers" would refer to breaking parts of the ship, always a considerable calamity: perhaps masts or spars from bad weather or accident, or any part being smashed by a cannonball. The flying "shivers" produced by said cannonball could also be the source of the term "Blyme" [blind me].

Not that I know of any etymological or historical authority to back up such a claim, but personally I have a bias towards the older meanings when they are available. Mainly it just feels a little less improbable -- and well, less cutesy...sorry -- than the idea of the ship vibrating when bouncing off a rock (?!?) or thrumming in a strong wind, as the folks at talklikeapirate.com would have it. (And of course this doesn't even begin to address whether real seamen ever used the phrase, but I figure if you are going to have a good story around it, you may as well have the more plausible good story.)

Hmm. That makes me wonder whether the term "shiv" (an improvised knife) comes from the same meaning of "shiver" as "fragment"...?

[Daniel]

Cut and Run - When an anchored ship, pirate or otherwise, was surprised by the vessel of a potential enemy bearing down under full sail, there often wasn't time to haul the anchor up before getting under way. So the captain would simply order the anchor line cut and proceed to perform "the classic military maneuver known as getting the hell out of there." Hence "cut and run."

(Speaking of anchors, here's an amusing nautical phrase not in common use on land. Sailors used to tell of a Dutch captain who explained after his ship was wrecked that he had a very good anchor but had left it at home. Thus English-speaking sailors used to call anything left at home a "Dutchman's anchor.")

Scuttlebutt - The scuttlebutt was originally the barrel in which the day's supply of drinking water was kept. Sailors drawing their water at the scuttlebutt while off watch would often take advantage of the opportunity to exchange gossip. Thus the modern meaning of "scuttlebutt."