The Sailor's Word-Book / An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc.

by W. H. Smyth

ACUMBA. Oakum. The Anglo-Saxon term for the hards, or the coarse part, of flax or unplucked wool.

ACUTE. Terminating in a point, and opposed to obtuse. An acute angle is less than a right one, or within 90°.

ACUTE-ANGLED TRIANGLE. That which has all its angles acute.

ADAMANT. The loadstone; the magnet—the sense in which it was held by early voyagers; but others considered it a "precyowse stone," or gem.

ADAMAS. The moon in nautic horoscopes.

ADAPTER. A brass tube to fit the eye-end of a telescope, into which all the eye-pieces will screw.

ADARRIS. A word which Howell explains as the flower of sea-water.

ADDEL, or Addle. An old term for the putrid water in casks.

ADDICE, an adze. Also the addled eggs of gulls and other sea-fowl.

ADDLINGS. Accumulated pay or wages.