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

KEN-SPECKLED. Conspicuous; having distinct marks.

KENTLEDGE. Pigs of iron cast for permanent ballast, laid over the kelson-plates, or if in the limbers, then called limber-kentledge.

KENTLEDGE GOODS. In lieu of ballast.

KENT-PURCHASE. A misspelling of cant-purchase, or one used to turn a whale round during the operation of flensing.

KEPLER'S LAWS. Three famous laws of nature detected by Kepler early in the seventeenth century:—1. The primary planets revolve about the sun in ellipses, having that luminary in one of the foci. 2. The planets describe about the sun equal areas in equal times. 3. The squares of the periodic times of the planets are to each other as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.

KEPLING. See [Caplin].

KERFE. The furrow or slit made by the saw in dividing timber.

KERLANGUISHES. The swift-sailing boats of the Bosphorus. The name signifies swallows.

KERMES. A little red gall, occasioned by the puncture of the Coccus ilicis on the leaves of the Quercus coccifera, or Kermes oak; an article of commerce from Spain, used in dyeing.

KERNEL. Corrupted from crenelle; the holes in a battlement made for the purpose of shooting arrows and small shot.