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

KILL-DEVIL. New rum, from its pernicious effects.

KILLER. A name for the grampus, Orca gladiator, given on account of the ferocity with which it attacks and destroys whales, seals, and other marine animals. (See [Grampus].)

KILLESE. The groove in a cross-bow.

KILLING-OFF. Striking the names of dead officers from the navy list by a coup de plume.

KILLOCK. A small anchor. Flue of an anchor. (See [Kellagh].)

KILLY-LEEPIE. A name on our northern shores for the Tringa hypoleucos or common sand-piper.

KILN. The dockyard building wherein planks are steamed for the purpose of bending them to round the extremities of a ship.

KIN. See [Kinn].

KING ARTHUR. A game played on board ship in warm climates, in which a person, grotesquely personating King Arthur, is drenched with buckets of water until he can, by making one of his persecutors smile or laugh, change places with him.

KING-CRAB. The Limulus polyphemus of the West Indies.