The Sailor's Illustrated Dictionary

Here is a comprehensive lexicon of more than 9,000 terms and phrases used by sailors and seafarers both past and present.

Have you ever been caught in the doldrums? Can you spot the difference between a ketch and a yawl? Do you know when you are ready to jibe or whether one "fakes" or "flakes" a line?

The richly diverse language of contemporary seafaring is a curious blend of terms, reflecting generations of the sailor's enterprise. Some of the oldest terms still retain their original meanings from before Shakespeare's day; other old terms have subtly shifted meaning over the years. Still others, brand-new and freshly minted from desktop computers, spring up fully jargoned and acronymed. Thompson Lenfestey's The Sailor's Illustrated Dictionary, the most modern, comprehensive and accurate reference of its kind to appear in forty years, gathers more than 9,000 nautical terms and makes sense of them. It covers the whole scope of contemporary seafaring--from supertankers to dinghies, from naval warfare to pleasure yachting, and from sail to oar.

While The Sailor's Illustrated Dictionary is rich in the lore of the sea, it is also written in clear, accessible language, with a practical hand trained by years of seafaring experience. You will find parts of speech, unusual pronunciations, and, when needed, examples of appropriate usage, as well as illustrations showing subjects as wide ranging as knots, cloud formation, navigation lights, and silhouettes of sail and power vessels. This is an essential reference work to own, whether you are a merchant shipper, a racing yachter, or a Navy sailor, not to mention a historian, writer, or just anyone who loves the sea.