Under weigh/way - Wordsmith.org

Ahoy, me mateys.

I came across "under weigh" in a short story by H. G. Wells. At first I thought it was a malapropism (elsewhere the narrator uses "wreck and ruin"), but looked it up, and both "way" and "weigh" are acceptable.

What is the nautical explanation of "under weigh". The anchors are being weighed and the ship is ready to depart? If so, it seems to imply the onset of an activity, whereas "under way" implies that something has already started and is making good progress.

In either case one might wonder what the under was doing in there. According to Michael Quinion the source is the Dutch on der weg, 'on the way.' It got almost immediately eggcorned to under weigh, with an old sense of the word weigh, meaning 'to raise up.'

From Gary Martin at Phrase finder:

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'Way' doesn't mean here road or route but has the specifically nautical meaning of 'the forward progress of a ship though the water', or the wake that the ship leaves behind. Way has been used like that since at least the 17th century.

...

More confusion enters with doubts over the phrase's spelling. The term 'weigh anchor', and the fact that when ships are loaded with cargo and ready to sail they are weighed down, has lead to the phrase being written as 'under weigh'. This a common enough misspelling to have become almost standardised; so much so that, in his 1846 Nautical Dictionary, Arthur Young wrongly suggested that under weigh was in fact the correct original spelling:

"Under way, this expression, often used instead of under weigh, seems to be a convenient one for denoting that a ship or boat is making progress through the water, whether by sails or other motive power."

There seems little to justify it, but Young must have had some success in promoting that view as many prominent 19th century authors, including Thackeray, Herman Melville and Charles Dickens, all spelled the term that way - or should that be that weigh?

So 'way' is the original phrase, with a nautical intent, that was modified through usage.

In Dutch, when you are 'onderweg' (one word) you are taking yourself from one place to another. On foot, by car, bike, ship or by plane; you are or one is on the way (under way?)to get somewhere.(maybe this fits in the context).

I thought it was a malapropism (elsewhere the narrator uses "wreck and ruin")

OK, I'll bite: what's wrong with the phrase wreck and ruin?

Dutch on der weg, 'on the way.'

I like how the Dutch preposition on and the definite article der got reanlysed as the English preposition under (whichis cognate with the English (via Latin) words inferior, infernal, &c., < PIE *̣ndhos).

re: I like how the Dutch preposition on and the definite article der got reanlysed as the English preposition under (which is cognate with the English (via Latin) words inferior, infernal, &c.,

wouldn't the on/un perception depend a lot on how the dutch said on/(and how the english did?)

a maternal aunt was MAR ee (mar like to mar the surface)

we kids heard MARY, but my mother was saying Marie. they gave up trying to correct us, (or perhaps never heard what we were saying) and she became aunt Mary.

it wasn't till i was an adult that i heard MARee as Marie.
(by then i had traveled to both Ireland and UK and had a better ear.)

(i don't know any dutch (and haven't heard much spoken dutch) to know, and besides, i presume spoken dutch has change as much as spoken english over the centuries. could it be that onderway sounded like underway?

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

I thought it was a malapropism (elsewhere the narrator uses "wreck and ruin")

OK, I'll bite: what's wrong with the phrase wreck and ruin?

The phrase "rack and ruin" first appeared in English literature in the late 16th century, and its longevity as a figure of speech probably owes a lot to the attractive alliteration of its repetitive initial "r" sounds. [The Word Detective]

that 'rack' here is but a variant of 'wreck' is a moot point.

that 'rack' is often spelled 'wrack' in this phrase is even mooter.

-joe (wrack & roll) friday

(p.s. - this is where Bran steps in to explain wrak).

Ah, thanks, tsuwm. Now that you've joggled my brain, I seem to remember the older version (w)rack and ruin. The newer one, wreck and ruin, has been being used consistently since at least the middle of the 19th century: cf. Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter:

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But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened! Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success.
[Chapter 17.]

I'll take a look at some of the usual usage suspects.

My turn? Wrak (Dutch) means in the first place a sunken (wrecked)ship.It is now also used as auto (car) 'wrak'.
As an adjective: 'wrakke', it means anything on the point of collapsing, a bridge, a bike, a building.(even a body, alas) But a collapsed building is not called a 'wrak'. It's a 'ruine'.Ru-eene.(Ah, yes a human being can be called a 'wrak')

edit,edit,edit

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OK, I'll bite: what's wrong with the phrase wreck and ruin?

I always thought "wreck and ruin" was a malapropism.

From the Oxford American Dictionary (2005):

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PHRASES
go to rack (or wrack) and ruin gradually deteriorate in condition because of neglect: fall into disrepair. [ORIGIN: rack from Old English wr�c [vengeance] ; related to wreak.]

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USAGE The relationship between the forms rack and wrack is complicated. The most common noun sense of rack, �a framework for holding and storing things,� is always spelled rack, never wrack. The figurative senses of the verb, deriving from the type of torture in which someone is stretched on a rack, can, however, be spelled either rack or wrack: thus,: racked with guilt or | wracked with guilt; | rack your brains or | wrack your brains. In addition, the phrase | rack and ruin can also be spelled | wrack and ruin .

Quote:

PHRASES
go to rack (or wrack) and ruin gradually deteriorate in condition because of neglect: fall into disrepair. [ORIGIN: rack from Old English wr�c [vengeance] ; related to wreak.]

yeah, don't go wrecking no vengeance.

-joe (but please don't wreck havoc) friday

I always thought "wreck and ruin" was a malapropism.

The interesting thing is that wrack and ruin is a set phrase, and I'm not sure that wreck and ruin is not synonymous. Many object to rack and ruin, under the impression that rack as a noun means a instrument of torture or something to hang one's hat on, but, as I said in my reply to tsuwm's explanation, wreck and ruin have been being used for at least a century and a half. What if I wanted to use the compound kith and sib (or the punning kith and cousin) rather than irreversible binomial kith and kin (i.e., friend and relative)? Would that be incorrect or a malapropism? Wreck and ruin is not quite the same thing as using wreck for wreak as in havoc.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

Wreck and ruin is not quite the same thing as using wreck for wreak as in havoc.

I wreckon not.

Oh we're splitting hares.

[squawk!] Gary Martin also needs a better editor (see my post about the banned words list), to get the lead out.
Wreck and ruin: I don't know, maybe it's a cross between a malapropism and an eggcorn; but whichever or whatever it is is less important than the fact that it's just a plain misspelling! Grr! Some things are just facts, such as that the year 2000 was not the beginning of the new century, and that wrack is the correct spelling in this phrase!!