By Burton:
"now, 'scaped the tempest and the first sea-dread,
fled from each bosom terrors vain, and cried
the Melindanian Pilot in delight,
'Calecut-land, if aught I see aright!'"
1616.—"Of that wool they make divers sorts of Callico, which had that name (as I suppose) from Callicutts, not far from Goa, where that kind of cloth was first bought by the Portuguese."—Terry, in Purchas. [In ed. 1777, p. 105, Callicute.]
CALINGULA, s. A sluice or escape. Tam. kalingal; much used in reports of irrigation works in S. India.
[1883.—"Much has been done in the way of providing sluices for minor channels of supply, and calingulahs, or water weirs for surplus vents."—Venkasami Row, Man. of Tanjore, p. 332.]
CALPUTTEE, s. A caulker; also the process of caulking; H. and Beng. kālāpattī and kalāpāttī, and these no doubt from the Port. calafate. But this again is oriental in origin, from the Arabic ḳālāfat, the 'process of caulking.' It is true that Dozy (see p. 376) and also Jal (see his Index, ii. 589) doubt the last derivation, and are disposed to connect the Portuguese and Spanish words, and the Italian calafattare, &c., with the Latin calefacere, a view which M. Marcel Devic rejects. The latter word would apply well enough to the process of pitching a vessel as practised in the Mediterranean, where we have seen the vessel careened over, and a great fire of thorns kindled under it to keep the pitch fluid. But caulking is not pitching; and when both form and meaning correspond so exactly, and when we know so many other marine terms in the Mediterranean to have been taken from the Arabic, there does not seem to be room for reasonable doubt in this case. The Emperor Michael V. (A.D. 1041) was called καλαφάτης, because he was the son of a caulker (see Ducange, Gloss. Graec., who quotes Zonaras).
1554.—(At Mozambique) ... "To two calafattes ... of the said brigantines, at the rate annually of 20,000 reis each, with 9000 reis each for maintenance and 6 measures of millet to each, of which no count is taken."—Simão Botelho, Tombo, 11.