My wife and I are on the tenth of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, The Far Side of the World
POB must have derived a good deal of private amusement from his little invention, and I share that amusement; I also hope this post will save other devotees of his wonderful novels from tearing their hair out over this un-look-up-able word.
Update. As mollymooly explains below, it’s actually a variant of an established word variously spelled keckle, cackle, kaicle, or kecle. That’ll teach me to make over-hasty assumptions!
I read that book last weekend and found the following, in which O’Brian (or perhaps just the newsletter’s editor?) claims to have “seen it once or twice in an 18th century order book,” though he provides no citation.
See the first question in the Q&A:
http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/vol3i.htm#reader
It’s just possible that whoever made that entry in an 18th century order book extracted it from a nearby bodily orifice. Embezzlement isn’t a 20th century invention.
William Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1784) has
KAICLING, or KECLING, a name given to any old ropes, which are wound about a cable, with a small interval between the turns, and used to preserve the surface of the cable from being fretted, when it rubs against the ship’s bow, or fore-foot. See also ROUNDING and SERVICE.
“un-look-up-able”
maybe not the words but the expression
webster gave “gackle (noun) : Any piece of chicken which is unidentifiable as meat, skin, or bone.”
while urban dictionary’s entry is like un-mentionably gross
curse my curiosity and like of challenge
i check UD just in case cz once i happened to use a word without knowing its double meaning or slangish use and then it sparkled like such a huge flamewar with my having to leave the place and consequently perpetual animosity of the dwellers of the site towards me i guess
though it’s not my fault that your language utilizes to much of that, irony and sarcasm, double entendres
And the Sailor’s Word-book has KECKLING or CACKLING
Ah, so he didn’t make it up, he just changed it a bit either to make it funnier or to avoid confusion with the sounds of chickens. Thanks!
read: Yes, UD can be useful but has to be approached with considerable caution. I too saw that unmentionably gross entry!
Oh come on, the UD entry was hilarious, you guys are wimps 😛
Additionally, I’ve been frustrated by precisely this particular situation and it’s made so much worse when it’s in a foreign language and therefore you really don’t have any sort of intuitive sense as to whether it’s a real or made-up word like you would with your native language. I recall spending the better part of an hour trying to look up a word only to find out that the character in the movie made it up and I needn’t worry about it. Blah. How irritating.
Cheers,
Andrew
It’s not made up/changed: Nelson ordered Collingwood to gackle his cables as he lay dying at Trafalgar,
Hi N. Blake,
Very helpful. Where did you find that quote?
I’ve been gackling my brains out for a few days, especially when ‘gackle’ wasn’t in “A Sea of Words,” nor in Smyth’s “Sailor’s Word Book,” under that spelling. In his book, he cites various spellings of words, so I’m not surprised at this.
Thanks,
AZ
Thanks, I am currently re-reading FSOTW and am very pleased to have “gackle your cables” so well fleshed out. Whether the Nelson quote is factual or not, I will always remember it.
And I thought that I was the only nut that pays attention to O’Brian’s details! I am on my third reading of the series and learn more each time!
Nope, there are quite few nuts like us out there! I’m halfway through my second reading of the series, this time on my Kindle and with my iPad alongside to check the nautical obscurities as I go. Very enlightening!
In The Golden Ocean,
midshipmen Peter Palafox,a midshipmen engages in a game with his fellows in creating false names. He uses the term “gackled the cables “. It’s unclear if he was playing with words or using true rope talk.
Context wise, makes sense, anti-chaffing, gackle your cables. Perfectly clear; thx everyone, on my third? Rereading, pausing for the obscure words, very glad that I’m not the only one who has curiosity for details.
He also uses it in ‘The Golden Ocean’ (p. 233: “having gackled with the fire-grapnel chains”), so had thought about this expression years earlier!
…and again on p.237, “What a good thing we gackled our cables.” (Just reading ‘The Golden Ocean’ now – at last!)
The above definition (an additional security coating for the anchor cable) makes perfect sense within the context of a shallow chafing coral-covered sea-bed.
http://www.abandos.com/?page_id=247
Has that been linked, above? Has a ring of rightness about it:
[Abandos 1:] “Gackle – To shorten or lengthen the anchor cable.”
But it does not accord with the OED definition at cackle, v.2:
” ‘To cover a cable spirally with 3-inch old rope to protect it from chafe in the hawse hole’ (Adm. Smyth).”
OED refers us to keckle, v.2, where the meaning does fit with cackle, v.2, of course. But the first citation at cackle, v.2, perhaps works equally well if we assume [Abandos 1]:
“1748 B. Robins & R. Walter Voy. round World by Anson iii. ii. 318 They [sc. cables] were cackled twenty fathom from the anchors.”
A tangle still in need of faking.
All words are made up. It’s just a matter of by whom and when, and if anyone else knows what they mean. And the meaning of words is derived from how people use them. In other words, words mean what we mean them to mean.