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

PERMANENT MAGNETISM. The property of attraction and repulsion belonging to magnetized iron. (See [Induced Magnetism].)

PERMANENT RANK. That given by commission, and which does not cease with any particular service.

PERMIT. A license to sell goods that have paid the duties or excise.

PERPENDICLE. The plumb-line of the old quadrant.

PERPENDICULAR. A right line falling from or standing upon another vertically, and making the angle of 90° on both sides.

PERRY. An old term for a sudden squall.

PERSONNEL. A word adopted from the French, and expressive of all the officers and men, civil and military, composing an army or a naval force.

PERSPECTIVE. The old term for a hand telescope. Also, the science by which objects are delineated according to their natural appearance and situation.

PERSUADER. A rattan, colt, or rope's end in the hands of a boatswain's mate. Also, a revolver.

PERTURBATIONS. The effects of the attractions of the heavenly bodies upon each other, whereby they are sometimes drawn out of their elliptic paths about the central body, as instanced by the wondrous discovery of Neptune.