Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

oceanservice.noaa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 636 posts

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#391

Post by tapanjk »

fargle wrote: post #214
riffraff wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap my wife is the same, I have to tell her "turn my way" or "turn your way". It drives me insane as I always subconsciously interpret it as a form of lazyness, your framing of it as a form od dyslexia may finally allow me to be less bothered by it!

I was once driving along fine in the left lane and my female friend in the passenger seat suddenly yelled "TURN RIGHT HERE. RIGHT HERE! RIGHT HERE!!!" So I cut across two lanes, avoided several oncoming motorists and made a hasty but decent emergency right turn into the parking lot. She looked disgusted and said "Why did you do that? The place is RIGHT over there" and pointed to an area on the other side of the stree…

You sound like Raymond Reddington.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#392

Post by dguest »

somenameforme wrote: post #316

There's kind of a fun brain teaser related to this. Imagine you're speaking to an entirely alien species in another dimension. And you're trying to describe "left" to them. It's impossible. I say it's a brain teaser only because this sounds highly improbable at first. Forwards and backwards can be described, and even up/down if we assume basic fundamental rules remain the same. Yet left and right? It seems impossible…

It turns out you can define it from looking at radioactive decay (or any other interaction governed by the weak force). Feynman famously had a short description that ended with the punch line

> Suppose, after lots of communication you finally can go into space and meet your alien counterpart. If, as you approach one another, the alien extends its left hand to shake, watch out! He’s made of antimatter!

because even the physics of weak decays of will invert in an antimatter universe.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#393

Post by pbhjpbhj »

theiz wrote: post #350
modernerd wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't do this with cars. You have a left rear door, not a port rear door. “Driver side rear door” or “passenger side rear door” are pretty common, at least in the US and UK, where they mean the opposite. “Nearside“ (passenger side nearest curb in a right-hand drive vehicle driving on the left) and “offside” (driver side furthest from curb) are also used in the UK.

If you ever went 4x4 driving, you use driver / passenger to indicate the direction someone has to go to. This is because the navigation often is done from someone standing outside the car, where using left/right can be rather confusing.

In UK a [experienced, older?] driver gives another driver instructions with "right hand down" and "left hand down". That is, you give directions to move the steering wheel.

I've the vaguest recollection that sailing/steam boats used to say which side to move the wheel towards to steer; that begging opposite of the way the boat will go??

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#394

Post by stefncb »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #355
pmontra wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Molino is mulino in Italian. Ancient Greek and Latin had similar words starting with mol-. Given the importance of that technology I'm not surprised that the word didn't change much. English' mill is also close to the romance languages. [1] Port and starboard used to be "babordo" and "tribordo" in Italian but they were replaced by "sinistra" (the very word used to say "left") and "dritta". [1] https://en.wiktionary.o…

Babord is port in Norwegian. But starboard is styrbord which makes a lot of sense because the steering board, or oar, is on the steersman's right side.

We use "tribord" and "babord" in romanian.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#395

Post by croes »

denton-scratch wrote: post #376
fargle wrote: post #135

When I was a kid in Minnesota we needed to learn port/starboard and the colors red/green. A trick that helped me remember is that "LEFT", "PORT", and "RED" are all the shorter words and "RIGHT", "STARBOARD", and "GREEN" are the longer words in the respective pairs. FWIW.

Left is larboard (starts with L), which isn't starboard. So starboard is right. When you're facing the prow, of course!

Or simply StaRRRboard is right

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#396

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dogmatism wrote: post #115
interroboink wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your medical comment reminded me of the fascinating constellation of terminology used to identify locations and orientations in anatomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location Some of the terms: dorsal/ventral, proximal/distal, anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, oral/aboral, basal/apical When you're describing something like a microbe, the terms get fairly arbitrary; which is the "head" end of…

the thing that's tricky is basal/apical can be different directions: i.e. the base of the lung is at the bottom, the base of the left ventricle (in the heart) at the top. You have to know the shape of the organ to know. There's also cranial/caudal, axial/coronal/sagittal just off the top of my head

That's some good punning!

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#397

Post by evrimoztamur »

croes wrote: post #395
denton-scratch wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left is larboard (starts with L), which isn't starboard. So starboard is right. When you're facing the prow, of course!

Or simply StaRRRboard is right

PoRRRt!

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#398

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

russellbeattie wrote: post #356
narrator wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting thing about middle ages technologies, like boats, is that the words in the different romance languages for things invented in this era are very different from each other. For example, in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally different[1]. Other examples of middle ages words that are very different: windmill = molino, wheelbarrow = carretilla. Words that refer to older things have more…

In Spain a computer is an ordenador. Spaniards hate anglicisms. Car is coche, not carro, email is correo electronico, zipper is cremallera. Lots of others.

English car comes from Latin, actually, but Latin picked it up from Celtic (cf. Breton karr).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/car

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#399

Post by dendriti »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #388
narrator wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting thing about middle ages technologies, like boats, is that the words in the different romance languages for things invented in this era are very different from each other. For example, in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally different[1]. Other examples of middle ages words that are very different: windmill = molino, wheelbarrow = carretilla. Words that refer to older things have more…

Cheese is an interesting one - I would expect Spanish to share the word with French and Italian but it’s actually closer to English and Dutch. French fromage Italian formagio Spanish queso English cheese Dutch kaas Languages are so weird :)

This tracks, actually - Spain (or Spanish monarchs) ruled the Netherlands for over 170 years.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#400

Post by cypress66 »

perlgeek wrote: post #363
junon wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I understand. Directions are relative. I'd describe "left" how I describe every other direction.

How would you describe it? One approach would be: you're moving along a straight line, perpendicular to a large body that attracts you through gravity. Now "down" is towards the gravity, "up" is the opposite direction, and "left" and "right" are perpendicular, but which one is left and right, if you cannot rely on handedness?

Just draw a view frustum and mark up, down, left, right, near, far.
Post reply on HN