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

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

#611
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not certain that this is exactly what you're talking about, but one of my dictionaries (Webster's New International, 1916) includes this under the entry for Authentic, which brings me great joy: Authentic, Genuine. The prevailing sense of authentic is authoritative, trustworthy, with the implication of accordance with fact; as "confirmed both by legend and authentic record" (Froude); "assurances more or less auth…

Wow! I'd be fascinated how many person-hours went into that entry. On the whole, Wikipedia et al. are improvements in comprehensiveness and timeliness, but god damn do the gems of prior methods still shine brightly.

Webster's first dictionary was a one-man project and took 26 years. He learned 28 languages in order to research the etymologies. This New International is my favorite of the handful I own. I learned about it from https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary, which I learned about here, on HN. I just re-submitted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35635876

Here's one more entry, on synonyms of Intention:

Intention, Intent, Purpose, Design, Aim, Object, End are here compared in their general senses; for technical definitions, see defs. Intention, which often suggests little more than what one means or proposes to do, implies less settled determination than Purpose, less definite plan or prearrangment than Design, which frequently adds the implication of crafty or artful scheming; as "She had not had an intention or a thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled design" (Dickens); his intentions are good; cf. to declare one's intentions; "My purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die" (Tennyson); "I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a man hurrying along - to what? The creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it" (Keats); "envious commands, invented design to keep them low" (Milton); "Should he find me here, [he] would discover my name, and perhaps my designs, to the rest of the family" (Goldsmith); cf. "designing lovers" (id.). Intent is chiefly legal or poetical; as, intent to deceive, kill; "the power of a sublime intent" (Shelley). Aim emphasizes directness of purpose, Object that on which activities are focused, End that towards which they tend as their consequence or final cause; as, "to [his trust] keeps faithful with a singleness of aim" (Wordsworth); "her steadiness and courage in the pursuit of her aims" (J.R. Green); "Yet in the task of luxury of freedom I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit, which gave a value to every book, and an object to every inquiry" (Gibbon); the object of education, a man without an object in life; "I see in part that all, as in some piece of art, is toil cooperant to an end" (Tennyson); "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever" (Westminster Catechism). See Cause, Effect, Plan, Voluntary.

You may also be interested in Garner's Modern American Usage. David Foster Wallace, in reviewing this book for Harper's, wrote "He's both a lawyer and a lexicographer (which seems a bit like being both a narcotics dealer and a DEA agent)".

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

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not simply "counterclockwise"?

Depends. Are you referring to the rotation of the wheel or of the car? While I've never heard it used before, the post to which you're replying avoids that ambiguity.

I'm referring to the rotation of the wheel. But there is no ambiguity - when the wheel is rotated counter clockwise the vehicle turns (as viewed from above) counter clockwise. That is not coincidence - it is very intuitive to use.

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

#614
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Port and starboard become instinctive very quickly, with no mental gymnastics needed. Left and right are confusing, there must be a reason all sailors are using those terms..

That reason is called tradition

Tradition is a form of collective intelligence. Tradition is the ritual the Yandruwandha carry out to cook nardoo. Without that ritual it is poisonous.

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without the wind, the separate words help. In crew (rowed) boats, people sit backwards. And then boats are stored on racks upside-down. It can get complicated!

And the British decide to make things more confusing by referring to the sides of the boat as strokeside and bowside. Strokeside is always port, even if in that particular boat stroke's oar is actually on the starboard side- and even in a sculling boat!

And for some reason half of the world have port and starboard channel markers as red and green, and the other are green and red. I don't know who's fault that is!

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just seems like an old convention that has stuck, seem'm much simpler to anyone not familiar with ships to say 'ships left' or 'ships right' than to have new words. We don't do this with cars. You have a left rear door, not a port rear door.

> 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.

I don’t know how widespread this is but I don’t do this for the very reason you bring up with differences between countries, I drive in both the UK and Canada most years.

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

#617

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…

I suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is…

Interesting: once you nail down any two axises, the third follows.

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

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My driving instructor had short pieces of colored tape on the beams between the windshield and side windows. He would say to people with such problem "turn in the next left blue" every time. So when they got to their test and and the tester will say to them "turn in the next right" their brain will add a "red" and they will look it up in the car and find it on the right beam. He claimed it usually solved the issue.

I'm interested in the about the phrasing "in the next left/right." Are you located in the US? I moved from the mid-west to NYC and learned a fun regional language difference about waiting with others: Those from the NYC area say that they are "standing on line" whereas I had grown up saying "standing in line." That little in vs. on sounds so different!

Not at all (: That took place in Israel.

I've used mostly word by word translation from Hebrew as I didn't intuitively found "right" translation that will convey the same idea.

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

#619
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.

There are some we use in tech every day. The word log (as in logbook/log file) comes from a literal log that was thrown overboard to estimate the speed of the ship for navigation. After that, there's some fun slang that's nautical. Chockablock comes from the blocks (pulleys) getting jammed on each other when multiple ropes are being worked on. "Not enough room to swing a cat" refers to the Cat o' Nine Tails which was…

Chockablock is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for! These days abbreviated to just 'chocka', at least if my mum is anything to go by. Thanks for your reply

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

#620
post #191

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…

> Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat. Understatement of the week... pretty much everything on a boat has a different word for it. Often for practical reasons, sometimes purely traditional reasons. It is nice because it binds one to nautical tradition leading back centuries/millenia.

*Cough cough* rum, sodomy, and the lash *cough cough*
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