CBC
Updated Sun, October 22, 2023
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
By and large, I'm pretty even keeled, but I sometimes go a bit overboard when in hot pursuit of a linguistic loose end — in this case, how so much nautical jargon has managed to work its way into our everyday speech.
The English language is chock-a-block with words and idioms deriving from life at sea. Don't believe me? I've italicized every phrase in this article that originated among sailors.
Take my first sentence above. A versatile captain can navigate either by the wind or large of the wind. A vessel on an even keel (the centreline of its hull) sails steadily, without listing to either side. A rope whose end is left loose instead of being securely tied can foul up a ship's rigging or sails.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may be more likely than most to fathom the maritime origins of expressions like these thanks to our long local history of seafaring. Many of us still have at least a passing familiarity with the jibs, bows and sterns that feature in sayings like the cut of your jib, a shot across the bow and from stem to stern.
Seafaring idioms aren't restricted to seafaring cultures, though. They're in wide use everywhere English is spoken, from the American Midwest to the Australian Outback. So how did they become such a mainstay of our vocabulary?
In the 18th and 19th centuries, port cities were bustling centres of activity where sailors mingled freely with landsmen. Illustration by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Britannia rules the waves
English is an island language.
Nowhere in Britain is farther than a two-day horseback ride from the sea, and, while the ocean may once have isolated Britons from their neighbours on the European continent, it eventually became the artery connecting them to the rest of the world.
By the height of the Age of Sail in the early 1800s, the number of sailors in the Royal Navy was equivalent to about two per cent of the British male population.
Many men signed on voluntarily, drawn by the promise of three square meals a day and a share of their ship's prize money. Others were pressed into service, kidnapped off the streets of port cities by press gangs and forced to enlist.
King William IV served in the Royal Navy from the ages of 13 to 25, earning him the nickname the Sailor King. He was noted for his salty language. Portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee, ca. 1800. (National Portrait Gallery)
Naval service cut across the social hierarchy, bringing men from a wide range of classes into close quarters with one another. Seamen generally hailed from the working classes and officers from the professional and upper classes. Aboard ship, all had to learn a new way of speaking.
"Sailors' talk," wrote merchant seaman and nautical novelist W. Clark Russell in 1883, "is a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as Hindustani is, or Chinese."
At sea even familiar words took on new meanings, making the speech of sailors almost incomprehensible to landsmen.
Here, the devil was the longest seam in the hull, and when you were assigned to caulk it you had the devil to pay. The cat o' nine tails, the infamous instrument of punishment, was wielded only in the open air because below decks there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.
Besides navy men, merchant sailors and fishers, longshoremen and dock workers, coast dwellers, sailors' families, and anyone who travelled by sea would have been exposed to this Jackspeak — the lingo of British Jack Tars.
Sailors in popular culture
The large number of Britons in contact with sailors must have gone some way to popularizing seafaring jargon, but a second factor gave Jackspeak an even bigger boost.
The navy sent gangs of toughs into port cities to capture men and force them to enlist. The perfect mark was someone with previous sailing experience on merchant ships or fishing vessels. Etching by John Barlow after Samuel Collings, 1790. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
The heyday of sailing happened to coincide with a boom in English literature. Over the course of the 18th century, newspaper and magazine publishing flourished, and the novel came into its own as a literary genre.
The romance and perils of life at sea provided rich source material for authors, and tales like Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) were met with a groundswell of popular interest.
Authors peppered their prose with nautical terms to add realism to their work. For readers, the strangeness of the language seems to have been part of the appeal.
Jackspeak was like a riddle to be solved. It could hide thrilling racy undertones or dangerous criticism of authority. It could also be used to comedic effect, as it was in satirical cartoons of the day.
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
As nautical language became more recognizable ashore, it lent itself to metaphor. Landlubbers couldn't use the terms in their original context and so applied them to new situations.
A lifeline, originally a rope for sailors to hang onto in rough seas, became any type of help received at a critical moment. Leeway, the extent a ship drifted away from the wind, became any degree of freedom in time, space or action. A kink, or twist in a rope, became an eccentricity and, later, an unconventional sexual preference.
Today our language is laden with maritime imagery, a legacy of English's island origins and the appeal of a footloose life at sea.
From cheers at the Brier to songs for the Raptors, this MUN researcher is studying the sounds of sports
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Bouncing balls, blowing whistles and roaring crowds are all sounds you may hear at a sporting event.
For Jordan Zalis, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University, it's music to his researching ears.
Along with being a music lover, he's also a huge fan of sports. What we hear while watching sports says a lot about who we are as a society, he says.
"One of the the really interesting ideas has to do with sports ability to reproduce ideas from romantic nationalism," told CBC News.
"You have a team you're a fan of. You wear the same colours. You have your turf, you have away games, but you celebrate."
Brad Gushue won the 2017 Brier in St. John's. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
For Zalis, it's not just sport — he sees it as theatre.
"What sport teaches us is that it's totally normal and totally acceptable to get along with perfect strangers and wear the same colours and cheer for people we don't know in a simulated battle at Centre Court."
When the crowd is cheering, Zalis said, there can be a visceral sense of oneness in a room uniting complete strangers. It's something he says is almost like a religion, as in the French sociologist Émile Durkheim's theory of collective effervescence.
"People being together in close proximity, believing the same thought, participating in the same actions. And it gets you to this point of almost ecstasy," said Zalis.
His interest in the sound of sports started in high school, when his school in Winnipeg got a new pep band for football and basketball games. From there, he says, he started looking into the history of marching bands and the military, and was fascinated by the group solidarity that music created.
Zalis is currently writing about the Toronto Raptors for his thesis. (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
He sees stadium anthems like We Are the Champions as having those same effects.
In 2017, he and fellow researcher Diego Pani studied the sounds of the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John's. Zalis remembers the moment when he, along with thousands of people in the crowd, were yelling at the final rock being thrown by curler Brad Gushue.
"Isn't this one of the only times in our lives where this completely irrational behavior [is justified]? I'm screaming at an inanimate object to do something. But I really, really believe it will help," said Zalis. "The Brier was an incredible experience and study object."
These days, he's researching the sounds of one of the biggest sports teams in North America — the Toronto Raptors. The lead question for his latest work is, "What does basketball sound like?"
While the answer can be different for everyone, Zalis says, ultimately the sound of the Raptors is a choreographed theatrical experience.
The scoreboard at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto encourages fans to 'get loud.' (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
"If you look at everything that goes into this carefully curated spectacle with brilliant media and communications, people and artists and brand managers, graphic designers, sound designers — there really is a coherent branding and a coherent experience." said Zalis.
"The moment you set foot in the arena, it's like Disney World," said Zalis "From the sounds, to the sights, to the smells of everything that you're going to experience the moment you engage in this massive world of pro sports."
And Zalis says it's not just the pro leagues that play into this sensory experience either.
"If you go to a a kids' basketball game, you're going to hear music in the arena now, or in the community centre too."
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Bouncing balls, blowing whistles and roaring crowds are all sounds you may hear at a sporting event.
For Jordan Zalis, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University, it's music to his researching ears.
Along with being a music lover, he's also a huge fan of sports. What we hear while watching sports says a lot about who we are as a society, he says.
"One of the the really interesting ideas has to do with sports ability to reproduce ideas from romantic nationalism," told CBC News.
"You have a team you're a fan of. You wear the same colours. You have your turf, you have away games, but you celebrate."
Brad Gushue won the 2017 Brier in St. John's. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
For Zalis, it's not just sport — he sees it as theatre.
"What sport teaches us is that it's totally normal and totally acceptable to get along with perfect strangers and wear the same colours and cheer for people we don't know in a simulated battle at Centre Court."
When the crowd is cheering, Zalis said, there can be a visceral sense of oneness in a room uniting complete strangers. It's something he says is almost like a religion, as in the French sociologist Émile Durkheim's theory of collective effervescence.
"People being together in close proximity, believing the same thought, participating in the same actions. And it gets you to this point of almost ecstasy," said Zalis.
His interest in the sound of sports started in high school, when his school in Winnipeg got a new pep band for football and basketball games. From there, he says, he started looking into the history of marching bands and the military, and was fascinated by the group solidarity that music created.
Zalis is currently writing about the Toronto Raptors for his thesis. (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
He sees stadium anthems like We Are the Champions as having those same effects.
In 2017, he and fellow researcher Diego Pani studied the sounds of the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John's. Zalis remembers the moment when he, along with thousands of people in the crowd, were yelling at the final rock being thrown by curler Brad Gushue.
"Isn't this one of the only times in our lives where this completely irrational behavior [is justified]? I'm screaming at an inanimate object to do something. But I really, really believe it will help," said Zalis. "The Brier was an incredible experience and study object."
These days, he's researching the sounds of one of the biggest sports teams in North America — the Toronto Raptors. The lead question for his latest work is, "What does basketball sound like?"
While the answer can be different for everyone, Zalis says, ultimately the sound of the Raptors is a choreographed theatrical experience.
The scoreboard at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto encourages fans to 'get loud.' (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
"If you look at everything that goes into this carefully curated spectacle with brilliant media and communications, people and artists and brand managers, graphic designers, sound designers — there really is a coherent branding and a coherent experience." said Zalis.
"The moment you set foot in the arena, it's like Disney World," said Zalis "From the sounds, to the sights, to the smells of everything that you're going to experience the moment you engage in this massive world of pro sports."
And Zalis says it's not just the pro leagues that play into this sensory experience either.
"If you go to a a kids' basketball game, you're going to hear music in the arena now, or in the community centre too."
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