#90495
12/28/2002 6:21 PM
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From "The Wrecj of the Whaleship Essex" : "........a sudden squall of wind struck the ship.....
and knocked her completely on her beam ends, stove one of our boats,and threw down
the cambouse
I could not find this word in any dictionary. I found the word in several sites. One mentioned
Lewis and Clark having a blacksmith cut up a cambouse into four inch squares of metal
which they traded to the Indians for maize to eat. Another site showed a pictrue of a guy
in a sort of cramped kitchen with pots and pans on what may have been a stove, captioned
"Zort dans sa cambouse". I could not find "cambouse" in any French dictionary.
Then I had a hunch, and looked up etymology of "caboose". Here's what I found:
caboose - 1747, from M.Du. kambuis "ship's galley," from
Low Ger. kabhuse "wooden cabin on ship's deck."
Railroading sense is 1861.
So am I a clever boy, and does the "cambouse" that was knocked down on the Essex by
the sudden squall mean the ship's galley ?
See if any of you can find "cambouse" in a dictionary.
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#90496
12/28/2002 9:35 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
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Well, Atomica told me that surely I meant cam or bouse. Here's what it has for bouse:
bouse also bowse (bouz) .
v. Nautical., boused also bowsed., bous·ing bows·ing., bous·es bows·es.
v.tr.
To pull or hoist with a tackle.
v.intr.
To hoist.
[Origin unknown.] I tried Google, and the couple of listings in French made me try a French dictionary; I'm afraid the on-line ones that I can find are not very comprehensive. I did find, however, cambuse: a) (Shipping) storeroom
(b) (Slang) pad; quelle ~! what a dump!, what a (complete) dive! I also found a link to a picture of someone cooking, titled (in French) 'Zort in his cambouse'. http://groups.msn.com/weekendscoliens/wequimousse1.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=3265Not a great deal of help, I'm afraid. I hope the Word Master responds to the challenge. :-)
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#90497
12/28/2002 10:10 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
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from W3:
caboose Main Entry: ca·boose
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: probably from Dutch kabuis, kombuis, from Middle Low German kabuse
1 also camboose \kamb-\ a : a deckhouse where cooking is done : a ship's galley b : an open-air cooking oven
2 dialect : HUT
3 : a freight-train car usually attached to the rear of a train mainly for the use of trainmen in the performance of their duties although sometimes used to transport passengers, especially livestock caretakers
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#90498
12/28/2002 10:45 PM
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And if you thought "cambouse" was a dilly, try this one. The site had quite a few typos, but I
can't make head or tail of this one:
1.Charles W. Morgan, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, CT, Sail ... - ... into the blubber
room. Amidships is the mainmast, with a fife rail encircling the mast and bilge pumpsenditalid.
Aft of the mainmast ...
http://www.kelseypub.com/ct-guide/museums/chmorgan.shtml
Here's another improbable word from "The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex". I'm baffled.
"The night was spissy darkness itself." Nothing pertinent on Internet.
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#90499
12/29/2002 5:30 AM
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spissyWow, Dr. Bill! A real toughy! It's roots seem to be Germanic, spiss, Norwegian to be exact...it seems to have something to do with football in Norwegian. But the only English translation I can find in any Norwegian-English dictionary is jag. Put spiss in the search and you get plenty Norwegian hits. There's also a spis in Swedish meaning fireplace. so jag>jagged darkness? hmmm...dunno fireplace>smokey>foggy darkness? Here's a url to a Norwegian sports page with spiss used in the headline: http://www.dagbladet.no/sport/2002/05/14/330866.html(think it's gonna take someone with a higher speed connection than mine to track this one down) 
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#90500
12/29/2002 2:11 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
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<sigh>
spissy, adj. [Obs. rare.]
[f. L. spiss-us see SPISS a. (thick, dense, compact, close)]
dense, compact
1570 LEVINS Manip. 108 Spissy, massy, spissus. 1637 N. WHITING Albino & Bellama, Vind. Poesy H7 The spissye aire..Turnes into sea, earth's made a thickned water. 1683 PETTUS Fleta Min. I. (1686) 101 Sometimes with the digg'd Gold..there breaks a small grey spissy Oar.
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#90501
12/29/2002 2:26 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
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>and bilge pumpsenditalid this looks like it should be bilge pumps <end ital>; you'll notice that in the original, the entire remainder of the article is in italics from there on. http://www.kelseypub.com/ct-guide/museums/chmorgan.shtml-joe friday of fong
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#90502
12/29/2002 2:34 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
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spissyMe: (think it's gonna take someone with a higher speed connection than mine to track this one down)Or OED access! Thanks, tsuwm! You're da man! 
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#90503
12/29/2002 2:46 PM
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Posts: 13,858
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I wondered how ;much the editors had prettied up the prose of a simple seaman. I found a paragraph about him by Nantucket Historical Assn, with a picture of him very well dressed and looking as though his prose needed no prettying. The paragraph says something I think is very much in error. It says Owen Chase made a serious bluncer in plan to sail east to South American coast, instead of Tahiti, which it says was much closer. A look at the map shows that Tahiti was almost the same distance;, and in his narrative Chase discusses the necessity of finding favorable winds, which meant sailing south, then east. http://www.pbs.org/odyssey/class/essex_photo_05.htmlDear tsuwm - nice piece of detective work on "enditalic"
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#90504
12/29/2002 3:21 PM
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Posts: 10,542
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