Two Nautical Etymologies:
Killick "Small Stone Anchor" and Drake "Male Duck"

The article investigates the etymological roots for two nautical terms, "killick," which refers to an anchor, and "drake," which refers to a male duck. Examples from the vocabulary of Middle Irish, Middle English, German, and Olde Norse are used.

The first attestations of the nautical term killick, a small stone anchor enclosed in a wooden frame, are from the early seventeenth century,(1) and the lack of known exclusive roots in any dialect of the British Isles entails that etymological speculation is unlikely to win general support unless compelling new evidence is discovered.(2) As might be expected, the spelling varies considerably: killick, killock, kelleck, kellegh, keeleg. The use of the killick must have been limited to relatively small ships and boats; as early as the Viking age, cast-iron anchors with arms and flukes, perhaps modeled on those of the Mediterranean, were already being used in northwestern Europe (Marcus 84).(3) As such simple anchoring devices could be easily crafted as need arose, both the early technology and related terminology would appear to have lain far from the mainstream of both literacy and seafaring. Yet the word continues in use among modern-day sailors.

Most dictionaries that list the word (and several do not)(4) state that the etymology is obscure, although Eric Partridge was prepared to repeat Weekley's suggestion of a derivation from *keel-lock. But such a superficial resemblance is far from the reality of sailing, since anchors were never attached to ships' keels and could not be said to "lock" the keel in place at a mooring site. If one imagined the frame to have been a simple lashed wickerwork construction, both the material and general shape of the holder and the phonological contours of the term might suggest an association with Scots kellach (Sc. Gael. ceallach), a large conical wicker basket or creel, with a hinged or slip bottom, used to carry dung to the fields.(5) Yet the high incidence of taboo words in the seagoing lexicon of English and other neighboring languages in northern Europe would likely have precluded use of the same word for such widely differing environments, applications, and contingencies. The fact that killick is also used for a leading seaman's badge featuring an anchor is a further complicating factor, but here it would appear that the anchor fluke is being referenced: Killick also appears as a variant of gellock, derived in turn from gavelock, the "mouth" of a pickaxe, to which the anchor fluke bears a general resemblance.(6)

The shipbuilding and maritime vocabulary of Middle Irish was heavily influenced by Old Norse, and some thirty derivations are attested for various parts of the ship--for example, abur "oar-hole," achtam "brace," bat "ship's boat" beirling "strake" and "clinker-built ship," bord "plank," carb and cnairr "middle-sized cargo and troop ships" from ON habur, aktaumr, batr, byrdi/byodingr, bord, karfi and knorr, respectively (see Marstrander 1915). Although stjori, a small stone anchor used by the Norse and mentioned, for example, in Egils saga Skallagrimssonar, is not reflected in Irish lexicon, it may, nonetheless, have been a cultural transfer. Among yet other terms, ON kjoll "ship" is found in Irish as ciuil.(7) Because the practicalities of mooring a small vessel securely would have been best served by a weight that lay flat on the seabed, a stone with at least two larger flat sides would have been desirable. Such a stone, natural or roughly dressed, was called lia in Irish or liac, a form generalized from the accusative case.(8) Well-known specific applications are to "standing stones" and other landmarks, whetstones, and flagstones, including those forming part of early Celtic inaugural regalia, such as the Stone of Scone. It is then proposed, in the absence of a surer source, that killick, perhaps entering English in an area such as Galloway, reflects ON kjoll in a hybrid Gaelic (Irish, Manx, or Scottish) compound *ciuil-liac "ship's stone" or "anchor."

The English term for the male duck, drake, first attested in Middle English, has been associated with northern and central German dialect terms such as draak, drake, drache. These are not universally viewed as simplex forms and homonyms with, or extended meanings of, words for "dragon," but are rather seen as shortened from earlier compounds represented by OHG antracco, antrecco, MHG antreche, and Modern German Enterich (OED, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology). The first element is found as and, ant, anut, end, ente and meant "duck." The later dialect forms, draak and so forth, would then have resulted from a "nonetymological" break in a compound consisting of end/ant and some suffix. An alternate derivation would be a direct descent of the above dialect forms from an original Germanic *drak(k)o, whereas other dialects and the emerging literary language prefixed end/ant to the simplex in order to distinguish it from terms for the dragon.(9)

The absence of these roots in the known OE lexicon does not preclude a native development of drake ("male duck" in English) but invites speculation whether other sociolinguistic forces may not have been at work at a critical moment in the development of this item of the vocabulary of ME. French also displays a distinction between male and female in terminology for the duck. Feminine cane(10) is matched by masculine canard, in which the stem is augmented by the common aggranditive suffix -ard. Canard would also go on to take its meaning of preposterous, often slanderous, comment ("mendacious quacking") in French and then in the English loan canard and German calque Ente. But medieval French knew another canard.

The distinctive features of early Scandinavian ships and the impact of Viking raiding and trading on continental Europe resulted in the assumption of Norse nautical terminology in other vernaculars than Irish. The Norse knorr was a middle-sized cargo vessel capable of carrying both men and goods on the open sea, and the name seems originally to have referred to the studded or gnarled appearance of the ships' hulls created by the heads of the iron rivets used to attach the strakes to one another (Sayers). The word was adapted in OE as cnearr, although apparently with a somewhat wider application, warships also being designated by the term. On the continent, also subject to Norse incursions, the initial consonant combination of knorr, unknown in Gallo-Romance, was resolved in French as canard (Medieval Latin canardus in the histories), with the orthography perhaps influenced by the zoonym. But among a number of other popular names, a slimmer Norse warship was called dreki "dragon," after both the sleek shape and the zoomorphic carvings mounted on the stem during military operations.(11)

As ships of this same type were being crafted in Normandy at the time of William's invasion of England, a technology transfer to which the Bayeux Tapestry bears ample witness, the French term canard for a warship (Norman or Norse) must have been brought to England with the invaders. In seeking to determine the evolution of Eng. drake as a designation for the male duck independent of continental Germanic analogues, we must then consider whether English knowledge of the Norse ship type called dreki comparable to that of knorr, combined with the arrival of Old French canard, both "male duck" and "(dragon-stemmed) warship," could have prompted eleventh- and twelfth-century speakers to extend the meaning of OE draca, "serpent, dragon" and more narrowly "sea monster" to designate the male duck, with perhaps some reinforcement aided by the resemblance of the neck and head of the bird at rest on the water to the curved and "dragon-headed" prows of Scandinavian-style warships.

NOTES

(1.) The Oxford English Dictionary; first recorded instance, Winthrop, I. 40.

(2.) Unrepresented in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, or Thomas Wright's Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English.

(3.) The Exeter Book Riddle No. 16, whose solution is "anchor," mentions a tail (steort) that grips rocks, thus something more elaborate than a stone; Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III, 189, 1.8; see, too, Williamson, where the riddle is No. 14.

(4.) Bamhart, Onions, Skeat.

(5.) Discussion and illustration in the Irish context in Evans 168-169. The Hiberno-English term is pardog.

(6.) Warrack; Joseph Wright, s.v. killick with reference to Galloway.

(7.) The Book of Ballymote, [206.sup.b]14, [209.sup.a]9.

(8) Dictionary of the Irish Language. Cf. Eng. cromlech

(9.) Brockhaus Wahrig Deutsches Worterbuch confirms a reconstructed *anut-trahho, while also positing a west Gmc *drako "Mannchen," and would relate Eng. drake to this root. Partridge suggests aphesis in the reduction of *anut-trahho.

(10.) Likely of Frankish origin; cf. Ger. Kahn "ship."

(11.) Cf. the parallel terms ON snekkja, OE snacc and OFr. esneque, esnesche for similar serpentine imagery and note the Norwegian king Olafr Tryggvason's great ship, Ormrinn langi, "The Long Serpent."

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ANQ - June 22, 1999 - Sayers, William