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Jane Eyre vocabulary
3 nautical terms (boats, equipment, etc.)
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becalm
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tags: [nautical]
► definition
Definition:1. leave a sailboat stranded due to insufficient wind2. to make calm
► uses
Uses:
After much Traversing of the Equatorial Pacific, one can imagine a captain writing in his journal, in which we were often Tormented by Heat and frequently Becalmed, I have decided in the interest of Scientific Curiosity to Examine more Thoroughly the Peculiar Mating Rituals of native women in Tahiti.
J. Maarten Troost. The Sex Lives of Cannibals, p.111 (2004)
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September 29th.— We doubled the south-west extremity of Albemarle Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed between it and Narborough Island. Both are covered with immense deluges of black naked lava, which have flowed either over the rims of the great caldrons, like pitch over the rim of a pot in which it has been boiled, or have burst forth from smaller orifices on the flanks; in their descent they have spread over miles of the sea-coast.
Charles Darwin. Darwin’s Journal: The Galapagos
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The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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“Broke an axle-tree outside of Stirling, and we were becalmed three days [...]"
Diana Gabaldon. Outlander (1991)
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Enjoying, in duplicate, a concert: two marble-faced, becalmed Frenchmen sitting side by side,
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita.
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