The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #10241   Message #70594
Posted By: Bert
13-Apr-99 - 01:19 PM
Thread Name: Word definition site
Subject: RE: Word definition site
A lashing is a piece of rope about six feet long. Often used in the construction industry for tying or 'lashing' scaffold poles together.
An 'eye splice' is a small loop spliced into the end of a rope. You most often use it for tying a sheet bend.
A 'dog's cock' is often called an 'end splice' by landlubbers. It is simply the rope spliced back on itself to stop it unravelling. To tie it, you start off with a crown end knot, and just keep going for three full tucks.

Whipping is becoming less common with all that plastic rope around. You just melt the end in a flame. Ah, progress!

Another nautical word which is almost always Bowdlerised is a 'prick' of tobacco (sailors used to braid their chewing tobacco leaves into a short stubby length). Whenever you meet the term in polite society it is 'perique' tobacco. As if the French spelling would hide the meaning.

Bert.