MIZZEN. 31 



fore-and-aft sail. The definitions can apply only to a stay- 

 sail, jib, driver or spanker near the bow or stern. The later 

 authors cited and the modern sailor confine the term to a sail 

 or mast nearest the stern. Mizzcn, then, comes from viedius 

 b)' some other line of thought than "middle" mast or sail. 



Nor should we, a priori, expect the sail to be named from 

 the mast. Masts form rigid supports for the rigging, are few 

 in number and have only position and size to distinguish 

 them. Sails on the other hand are of many kinds and vary 

 greatly in shape, size and manner of setting and handling. 

 From some of these characteristics they are usually named in 

 order to distinguish them from the primitive and standard 

 square sail. Compared with a square sail, slung athwart- 

 ships, spread broad from side to side of the ship, with the mast 

 rising along its middle line to support the yards which suspend 

 the sail, any triangular sail, as a stay-sail, or a lateen, or any 

 fore-and-aft sail with its gaff and boom ending at the mast — 

 one of which kind of sails the mizzen is or always has been — 

 is in contrast, a halved or middled sail. 



And the idea of " middled "or " halved " is derived from 

 the meaning of nicdiKs, as logically as the strict sense of 

 middle or i)i tlic middle. The two shades of meaning are 

 neatly illustrated -In- the Italian words mezzogiorno, which 

 means the middle of the day, or noon, and mezzocerchio, 

 which means a half circle ^ — not the middle of a circle. So, 

 too, the Post-Classical L,atin medio means to halve, divide in 

 the middle, medians, halving. Hence it is submitted that 

 just as mezzocerchio means a part of a circle, so mizzen, as the 

 name of a sail, refers to it as a part of the standard sail, a 

 middled or halved sail. 



