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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?”

#441

Post by MoSattler »

jamager wrote: post #422
orestis wrote: post #414

In Greek boating terms, we use just plain left and right. At sailing school we were taught that left means always the left side of the ship as it travels forward, and similarly the right. We do use different words for the direction of the ship facing towards or away from the wind though. Not sure if the ancients used other words though. We managed to avoid confusion for a few hundred years though.

In Spanish is babor/estribor. Nothing to do with izquierda/derecha, no idea about etimology on this.

It has the same origin as the English equivalents.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/estribor

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

#442

Post by TeMPOraL »

philo23 wrote: post #365
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #335

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.

I guess some could argue that we do have some special vocabulary for cars too. E.g. you don't call it the front/back door, you call it the bonnet/boot (or maybe hood/trunk depending where you're from) though that probably is stretching the definition of a door a little bit... but then you also have nearside and offside for passengers/drivers side, though that's probably a bit more of a technical term.

> though that probably is stretching the definition of a door a little bit...

It is, but then so is the stupid "3-door" / "5-door" / etc. car classification, which is really 2-door / 4-door / etc. with the trunk being counted as additional door for some reason.

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

#443

Post by ttepasse »

almostarockstar wrote: post #354
walthamstow wrote: post #207

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.

Leeway: The "lee" is the area downwind of a vessel. A lee-shore is a shoreline that the wind blows on to, as opposed to a windward shore that the wind blows off. To give leeway is to allow enough room for a vessel to be blown off course by the wind and avoid danger. Rig (noun): The mast and supporting stays on a boat. (oil rigs, "big rig" come from this I think). Rig (verb): To put the sails up and tie on the sheets…

I too doubt the posh etymology: If you’re sailing around the cape by definition you will have crossed the equator twice, meaning your calculation of the sun positions will change. Acronyms pronounces as words seem more a modern 20th century thing.

Wiktionary talks about posh coming from the Romani language, meaning half, in monetary terms, as in half a crown. Seems believable to me, a lot of modern terms come from traveller’s languages and argots and such. See also tory and whig.

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

#444

Post by francisofascii »

It gets even more confusing when the commanding officer orders hard a starboard. Does that mean turn the wheel left or right? Apparently it depends on the ship. There is the unsubstantiated story the Titanic crew bungled this. https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51664720100922

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

#445

Post by OJFord »

chii wrote: post #245
OJFord wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To rig something up, to go overboard, to leave something in your wake.

It's interesting that farming/agriculture and sailing both have left the legacy of their words into the language. It goes to show how important these industries are to civilization.

The sheer number of people (thinking particularly historically, pre-industrialisation) involved in them I suppose.

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

#446

Post by oesexe »

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.

Danish as well. I didn’t see it mentioned, so I will add: that back then, a ship could not moor along the key on starboard/styrbord side. So it had to be the other side: hence the English port side.

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

#447

Post by marvin »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #437
marvin wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of cheese, I've had a long-running discussion with French extended family regarding exactly what the words refer to. Norwegian 'cheese' = 'ost', and we refer to the brown cheese produced by boiling and solidifying the left-over whey fluid from cheese production as 'brunost'; 'brown cheese'. This product is important in cultures where food security and calories are held at a premium. My French relatives ho…

> the Germanic words stemming from 'kase', referring to caseine Casein was not discovered before cheese was. 'kase' doesn't refer to casein. Casein, the family of proteins, is named after cheese, the milk product consisting in large part of those proteins. And 'kase' is not a Germanic root. Fromage descends from the Latin word for "shape". 'kase' descends from the Latin word for "cheese". > There are two conclusions…

Do you have references for the last of your claims? I thought I did a reasonably exhaustive search for a layperson, but the sources I found could certainly be wrong. My hobby searches in this area have led me to conclude that etymology isn't a hard science, and ultimately one will arrive at someone's qualified opinion about something.

The relation between 'kase' and casein is very fair; cheese production obviously predates protein chemistry. I guess what I was trying to say was that the words are related, but if 'kase' derives from Latin for 'cheese', the rabbit hole continues. Why does the French word derive from shape, if the Romans already had a word for cheese? And what did their definition of cheese include?

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

#448

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

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, your orientation doesn't matter for the travel direction. Now, not only "right" and "left" are ambiguous - but also "up", "down", "forward" and "backward".

When in orbit, you have "prograde" and "retrograde" to refer to the velocity vector's direction and its opposite; if we dub that "forward" and "backward", then "radial" and "antiradial" are "down" and "up" (i.e. towards / away from the center of orbited body), and then "normal", "antinormal" for "left" and "right", which you can get from the cross product of "forward" and "up".

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

#449

Post by yobbo »

ivanhoe wrote: post #343
denton-scratch wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> windmill = molino I don't know Spanish, but "molino" looks like French "moulin", which is a mill; a windmill is "moulin a vent". So I reckon "very different" is an exaggeration.

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).

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

#450

Post by bryanlarsen »

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.

Yes, highly likely. My experience of such is mostly in the Canadian prairies, which are sectioned into square mile grids.
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