164 BROOM ALL : 



1882, when she broke the record by making the trip across in 

 less than seven days. This recalls yacht, ultimately from 

 Dutch jag-heji, to chase, hunt. Ram , like Latin aries, P^nglish 

 battering-ram, refers to the characteristic action of the animal. 

 In contrast with these active vessels, those without sails or 

 steam-power, as lighters, punts and canal-boats, are described 

 by the sailor as d^imb-craft . 



The foregoing examples, illustrating the vitality of the 

 sailor's language in grammar, phonetics, vocabulaiy and 

 metaphor, suggest that his peculiar speech is not only a tech- 

 nical nomenclature, but an active collateral growth from the 

 standard historic tongue. It reminds us of colonial dialects 

 where old words and grammatical forms are preserved more 

 tenaciously than in the mother countries. Colonists and 

 sailors are not usually derived from the "successful" and 

 cultured classes. They are rather the energetic and insubor- 

 dinate, who are better fitted to win in the material conflict 

 with natural elements and conditions than to succeed in the 

 intellectual, nervous, complex conflict with their civilized 

 fellow-men. Under colonial and nautical conditions alike, 

 purely intellectual progress, with its accompanying change in 

 the use and meaning of words, is almost wholly checked, and 

 the adoption of new words with new things represents the 

 only linguistic advance. Hence it is that our nautical lan- 

 guage preserves old forms of speech and yet easily adopts 

 new words suited to its needs as the sailor comes in contact 

 with the foreigner and his new products. 



