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

oceanservice.noaa.gov

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

#461

Post by jdmichal »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #424
lostlogin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. I was recently involved in a case where a patient decided that their left should be called the right side during a phone consultation as that would help their doctor. Good times.

Is this the story of how someone ended up with one less appendix than they should have?

People only have one appendix to start with. Did you mean appendage?

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

#462

Post by efitz »

A large part of learning to sail a boat is learning the terminology.

Everything has a name and none of the names coincide with non-nautical experience.

For instance, a “rope” on a sailboat refers to the metal part of a line usually used to the main sail. What non-sailors would call a rope, sailors call a line.

There’s a working vocabulary of 50-100 such terms and then hundreds more when you start talking about very specific pieces of equipment.

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

#463

Post by rcthompson »

usrbinbash wrote: post #264
rcthompson wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of using separate words for the frame of reference of the boat is that you can still use left and right with their normal meanings as well.

But I can also say: "I'm on the left side of the boat, and hold an apple in my left hand." The boat has a clearly distinguishable bow and stern, so it provides a frame of reference.

"Left side of the boat" is a lot more syllables than "port". And using different words makes it less likely that the listener will be confused by multiple uses of the same word to mean different things.

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

#465

Post by somenameforme »

codingdave wrote: post #372
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 isn't impossible, it is just arbitrary. The whole reason we can have this huge thread about different names for directions is that they is just arbitrary labels, with groups of people having a consensus on what word to use. BTW, If you really must explain it without just saying it is arbitrary, you can talk about clockwise vs. counterclockwise... which came from sundials, which came from the direction our shadows…

That's entirely relative to the direction that a body is orbiting about another.

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

#466

Post by otikik »

My brother in law works in building airplanes. Since a lot of the big pieces are mirrors of each other, the factories themselves are divided into two “sides”. In Spain they are called Left and Right, but in the UK they use the maritime terms instead.

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

#468

Post by [deleted] »

antognini wrote: post #89

It's interesting to compare how different professions handle the ambiguity in left/right. In the maritime world they went with an approach at one extreme, where they just use two completely separate words, "port" and "starboard." (Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat.) At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical s…

[deleted]

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

#469

Post by dontlaugh »

yafbum wrote: post #164
bryanlarsen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask a farmer for directions. In my experience it's more likely they will tell you to turn north/south/east/west than left or right.

Maybe in the US and other places that have a grid system as their main road planning principle and route naming principle? In Europe, where roads tend to follow the terrain more, I've not really heard this.

You’ll be told about uphill and downhill for sure.

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

#470

Post by denton-scratch »

yobbo wrote: post #449
ivanhoe wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and Italian "il mulino"... it all comes from Latin "molinum" for the mill (and "mola" for the grind stone used in mills)

The name of Thor's hammer "mjolnir" (as english speakers would see it) did not come through latin though, so the version of the word in germanic languages was inherited independently. "Mjolnir" means something like "crusher" and the noun "mjol" (flour) means "having been ground up". For example, it can be combined as vetemjöl (wheat flour) or stenmjöl (ground stone or stone powder).

> the noun "mjol" (flour) means "having been ground up"

Ah - "mjol" as flour must be cognate with "meal". I hadn't previously associated meal with mills, but it makes sense.

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