Yes, the building of boats is one of the simple, but impressive, pleasures.

Are you writing here that tholes are the equivalent of 'thowels'? I'll check it out...


Yes. I just did. And what a terrific coincidence! Remember our recent discussion about fat and thumbs and all that jazz? Well, it turns out that your etymological bounty also ties into thole and thowels. Read this from MW:

"Etymology: Middle English tholle peg, from Old English thol peg, thole for an oar; akin to Middle Low German dolle thole for an oar, Old Norse thollr peg, Greek tylos callus, knob, Sanskrit tavti he is strong -- more at THUMB"

So there we have the thumb again--and we know that the thumb ties into all those fat words!