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

OBTUSE ANGLE. One measuring above 90°, and therefore beyond a right angle; called by shipwrights standing bevellings.

OBTUSE-ANGLED TRIANGLE. That which has one obtuse angle.

OCCIDENT. The west.

OCCULTATION. One heavenly body eclipsing another; but in nautical astronomy it is particularly used to denote the eclipses of stars and planets by the moon.

OCCUPY, To. To take military possession.

OCEAN. This term, in its largest sense, is the whole body of salt water which encompasses the globe, except the collection of inland seas, lakes, and rivers: in a word, that glorious type of omnipotent power, whether in calm or tempest:—

"Dark, heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity."

In a more limited sense it is divided into—1. The Atlantic Ocean. 2. The Pacific Ocean. 3. The Indian Ocean. 4. The Southern Ocean.

OCEAN-GOING SHIP. In contradistinction to a coaster.

OCHRAS. A Gaelic term for the gills of a fish.