At 1:49:18 PM on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, tgpedersen
wrote:
[...]
> Yes, that's what the dictionaries say.
> But look at this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_rig
> Bark and brig are principally square-rigged.
> Barkentine and brigantine are hybrid square-rigged and
> fore-and-aft rigged.
> So it would seem those endings mean something like
> "-like", and that 'brigantine' is derived from 'brig', not
> the other way round.
The explanation is much simpler and much more plausible.
Originally <brig> was simply a colloquial abbreviation of
<brigantine>; as the OED explains, 'while the full name has
remained with the unchanged brigantine, the shortened name
has accompanied the modifications which have subsequently
been made in rig, so that a brig is now
(b) A vessel with two masts square-rigged like a ship's
fore- and main-masts, but carrying also on her main-mast
a lower fore-and-aft sail with a gaff and boom.'
[...]
> As an example of the standard of the etymology of ship types
> http://wapedia.mobi/en/schooner
It is quite believable that Wapedia does *not* represent the
actual standard of etymology -- of ship types or anything
else.
> 'A schooner (pronounced /ˈsku:n&/) is a type of
> sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft
> sails on two or more masts. Schooners were first used by
> the Dutch in the 16th or 17th century, and further
> developed in North America from the early 18th century
> onwards.'
> 'According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, the first
> ship called a schooner was built by builder Andrew
> Robinson and launched in 1713 from Gloucester,
> Massachusetts. Legend has it that the name schooner was
> the result of a spectator exclaiming "Oh how she scoons",
> scoon being a Scots word meaning to skip or skim over the
> water. Robinson replied, "A schooner let her be." [1]
> According to Walter William Skeat, the term schooner comes
> from the word scoon, while the sch spelling comes from the
> later adoption of the Dutch and German spellings.'
> Which makes one wonder what the Dutch called their
> schooners, before the Americans gave it a Scots name and
> spelled in the Dutch fashion?
OED:
Of uncertain origin; recorded early in the 18th c. as
skooner, scooner; the present spelling, which occurs only
a few years later, may be due to form-association with
school, or with Du. words having initial sch. The word has
passed from English into most of the European langs.: Du.
schooner, schoener, G. schoner, schooner, schuner
(recorded 1786), F. schooner, schoaner, Da. skonnert, Sw.
skonare, skonert.
The story commonly told respecting the origin of the word
is as follows. When the first schooner was being launched
(at Gloucester, Mass., about 1713), a bystander exclaimed
'Oh, how she scoons!' The builder, Capt. Andrew Robinson,
replied, 'A scooner let her be!' and the word at once came
into use as the name of the new type of vessel. The
anecdote, first recorded, on the authority of tradition,
in a letter of 1790 (quoted in Babson Hist. Gloucester, p.
252), looks like an invention. The etymology which it
embodies, however, is not at all improbable, though there
seems to be a lack of evidence for the existence of the
alleged New England verb scoon or scun, 'to skim along on
the water'. Cf. Sc. (Clydesdale) scon, 'to make flat
stones skip along the surface of the water', also intr.
'to skip in the manner described' (Jam.). The early
examples afford strong ground for believing that the word
really originated about 1713 in Massachusetts, and
probably in the town of Gloucester. The evidence of two or
three old prints seems to prove that the type of vessel
now called 'schooner' existed in England in the 17th c.,
but it app. first came into extensive use in New England.
Quite possibly the Dutch had none, or did not differentiate
this as a distinct type.
Brian