Pirate Words and Phrases: Meanings, Origins, Etc.

[capn'rob]

"Feh"! A term of discust or contempt in Yiddish. The Language is a Mideval German, Hebrew, Aramaic with Slavic, Old French and Old Italian mixed in. I think that, as with most Yiddish words, it sounds like what it means.

[Fox]

The OED cites:

1677 GALE Crt. Gentiles IV. 113 Phy! how depraved is mans nature altogether! 1749 FIELDING Tom Jones VIII. ix, Fy upon it, Mr. Partridge..are you afraid of facing a little cold?

[Mission]

A lot of pop-pirates use the slang term "deadlights" to refer to the eyes and I was wondering how far back this went. I actually found another topic about frog lanterns that had this to say...

The Deck prism is also known as a 'deadlight'....

I found more out about deadlights...

They are, essentially, portholes or portlights that cannot or are not made to open...

Today, a deadlight is an interior porthole window...

So, I guess the deck prism would be a horizontal deadlight...

Google is a grande thing...

My edition of Grose has "Day Lights" as being slang for eyes. [Note: 'Grose' refers to Francis Grose's book Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) which is about 100 years OOP.]

I have checked two very good books on the fitting of ships from the late-16th to early-19thC and have found nothing on deck prisms. I've found alot on wiindows, companionways, deck gratings, etc., but nothing on the little jewels.

So blackjohn (who can be trusted more often than not) seems to have gotten to the bottom of the origin of the term as being a part of the ship, although his source cites a very wide time range, making me wonder if even that is a period term. Regardless, this tells us nothing about deadlights being used to refer to eyes.

A surf 'round the net to figure out when and how this came to refer to eyes produced a lot of useless crap - there are several unsourced "Pirate Dictionaries" out there that have copied and repeated variations on the explanation "Yer eyes, lad!" Of course, these same sources also define 'Arrrr!' so we can set most of them aside as chaff. Interestingly (but still no more useful) is that Hargrave Jennings wrote a book in 1873 called Live Lights and Dead Lights but that is a book that discusses religion.

This all seems to go back to the supreme source of pop-piracy: Treasure Island, which was first serialized in 1881-2. (After Jennings book, interestingly enough.) In his book, Stevenson has Long John Silver spouting the improbable sentence "Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights!"

So unless someone has read something referring to 'deadlights' (or possibly 'dead lights' or 'dead-lights') as being eyes in material previous to that, this appears to be yet another thing that Stevenson gave us in his imaginative book written 150 after period.

[Mission]

OK, playing around with the search function Google Books. Note that Google books certainly doesn't have every book ever written in it. It also has the limitation that it can only be found if the word is spelled properly and the interpretation program can figure the words in the books it is searching out. (Those f's for s's confuse the heck out of the search program, for example. It. words do end up being spelled as 'Congrefs' by the interpretation program for example. However, it's the best source I can think of to find words in really old books as of this moment.

Searching for the terms "deadlights" and "dead lights" and limiting the time period of the search to books printed during 1/1/1500 - 1/1/1750, I get:

1. A faithful narrative of the capture of the ship Derby: belonging to the East-India Company, Agraham Anselm Commander) by Angria the Pirate, on the Coast of Mallabar, December 26, 1735.

"Deadlights were put up in the Victorys Great Cabin, that the Vizapunt and the rest should not make their Escape in the Night, all the Vessels Boats rowing, under Arms all Night, under the Stern, and round about the Gallivat [A small armed vessel, with sails and oars used on the Malabar coast.] that came off for the Vizapunt." (Page 73)

2. The meaning above appears to me to agree with something found in the 1736 Dictionary Britainnicum put together by Nathan Bailey.

"Dead Lights [ in a Ship] the Shutters for the Cabbin Windows, generally put up, or in most Ships rather let down in a Storm."

3. The earliest use of the word (via a Google books search, anyhow) appears by separating the words (dead lights) which is from the 1726 book A voyage round the world by way of the great South Sea, George Shelvocke:

"About midnight a sea struck us upon the quarter, and drove in one of our quarter and one of our stern dead lights, where we ship'd great quantities of water before we were able to stop them again: and were were for considerable time under continual apprehension of foundering again." (page 3)

So I don't even think we can state with certainty that the word in reference to shutters was in use during the golden age (which I have defined as being about 1690 - 1725 per Foxe.) And this meaning has nothing whatsoever to do with eyes, much less their closest cousin in meaning, lanterns.

So I'd say deadlights in reference to eyes (or even lanterns) is a non-period word based on what info I've found. Used properly for the GAoP it refers to shutter on a window in a ship.