Category Archives: Moby-Dicktionary

March 6, 2006

Moby-Dick vocabulary, ii (Part 2)

Hello. This is just Part 2 of a list that was too long to post in one piece. Go to Part 1 to get your bearings.


42. Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772.
Uno Von Troil (1746-1803), archbishop of Uppsala. Letters on Iceland (1777, trans. into English 1780). Joseph Banks, British naturalist and Daniel Solander, Swedish naturalist.

brimstone
1. Formerly the common vernacular name for SULPHUR.

Okay, this one I don’t really understand, and without a copy of the source (nowhere to be found online), I can’t seem to make any progress. He says “other articles of the same nature” – what nature? The common element to “dung, brim-stone,” and “juniper-wood” would seem to be that they all smell. Dung and brimstone smell bad; juniper wood smells good, right? They frighten whales away with strong odors? Nothing in Google is willing to endorse this theory, which doesn’t sound very likely to begin with. I feel stupid. Help with this.

43. Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in 1788.
Here it is in an 1829 edition of Jefferson’s collected writings. I have no idea why Melville calls it “Whale Memorial to the French minister.” It’s actually part of a description of the whaling industry that Jefferson had printed up and distributed to French politicians in an effort to convince them not to ban American whale oil from the French market. While it’s possible that calling it a “Memorial” is some sort of joke on Melville’s part, it seems more like he was just making a ridiculous mistake.

Nantuckois
This word for the residents of Nantucket seems to be peculiar to the writings of Thomas Jefferson. He does not, of course, mean the Wampanoag tribe – he just means the present-day whalers.

address, n.
4. General preparedness or readiness for an event: skill, dexterity, adroitness.

44. Edmund Burke’s Reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), in what’s generally published as Speech on Conciliation With the American Colonies (text / 1900 edition). The quote refers to “the spirit by which [American fishing] has been exercised,” but he then goes on to talk almost exclusively about whaling, so the reference is fair.

45. Edmund Burke. [somewhere.]
Well, I found it somewhere. For those of you who don’t want to click on the link – it’s a throwaway quote to start off a book review in the May 1831 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine, London. That’s a [somewhere] if ever there was one. Of course, it’s surely not Melville’s source. But this still makes me marvel at the sort of revelations that Google Print et al. might start turning up for scholars. It’s odd to think that only six months ago, it wouldn’t have been possible for me or anyone else to find this, whereas the implicit challenge to find it has been in print since 1851. In a few more years it may even become possible to read Finnegans Wake.

46. Blackstone.
William Blackstone (1723-1780), English jurist, from his Commentaries on the Laws of England, the first accessible major treatise on common law; influential in the formation of American law. This is from Book I, Chapter 8, wherein the king seems to be entitled to a lot of stuff. Here’s the text, but unfortunately as scanned in automatically from a first edition, apparently – so you’ll have to search for the royal fifb, whale and fturgeon.

47. Falconer’s Shipwreck.
William Falconer (1732-1769), Scottish poet, known primarily for his poem The Shipwreck (1762), and who actually went on to die in a shipwreck. The poem is discussed in context in this long essay. Melville’s extract is not quite consecutive – it’s lines 71, 75 and 76 of Canto II. Rodmond is one of the various doomed characters. He is here seen in the act of killing dolphins, not whales. At this point the ship hasn’t wrecked yet. But it will. Here’s an artist’s conception of what that will look like.

48. Cowper, on the Queen’s visit to London.
William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet, in a little-known poem, On the Queen’s Visit to London, The Night of 17th March, 1789. He’s describing fireworks that are part of the celebration of King George III’s return to health after his first long episode of illness (as mentioned here). Queen Charlotte visits London in secret and is deeply moved to see how much the people love George. I’m no judge of poetry but this seems to me to be really quite remarkably bad. I’m not going to judge Cowper based on it – I’m just saying. Even this excerpt is awful, no?

unwieldy, a.
4. Indisposed to submit to guidance or command; restive, recalcitrant, indocile.

49. John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. [A small sized one.]
John Hunter (1728-1793), Scottish surgeon, in Observations on the Structure and Oeconomy of Whales in the 1787 edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. However, Melville didn’t get it from there, he got it from Natural Theology by Paley, where it appears adjacent to the next extract. Hunter didn’t actually observe the heart pumping; he’s just reasoning based on its size – the heart is that of a Sperm whale, and “[a small sized one]” is Melville’s own two cents.

50. Paley’s Theology.
Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), the best-known work of William Paley (1743-1805), Christian apologist. This is the work from whence comes the “if I found a pocket watch in a field I would know it had a maker” argument by design. The whale quote comes from Chapter X: Of the Vessels of Animal Bodies, where it precedes and sets up the Hunter quote above.

bore, n.
2 a. The cylindrical perforation or cavity of a tube, gun, etc. b. Hence, the interior measurement or diameter of a tube; the calibre of a gun; also fig. and transf.

the water-works at London bridge
Destroyed in the 1820s with the building of the new London Bridge. Here’s what they looked like. I think this is saying that 250 gallons per minute was pumped through a 7-inch bore.

51. Baron Cuvier.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), French zoologist (who introduced the idea of phyla), in his major work of taxonomy, The Animal Kingdom (1727/1731). He actually writes, “The Cetacea are mammiferous animals…” But I have it from those notes I found that Melville probably got this from a frequent source, the Penny Cyclopaedia (1833-1843), where the quote could have been altered. I doubt that Melville himself would have felt the need to drop the word “Cetacea.”

mammiferous, a.
1. (Chiefly in scientific use.) = MAMMALIAN a. Obs.
Obviously.

52. Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery.
James Colnett (1753?-1806), A Voyage to the South Atlantic and round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries and Other Objects of Commerce (1798). Not available online – there’s an excerpt here but it’s the wrong part. Melville mentions this work again in Chatper 55.

53. Montgomery’s Pelican Island.
James Montgomery (1771-1854), British poet, from The Pelican Island (1828). I can’t find it anywhere online. Misattributed in the original edition to a different Montgomery poem, The World Before the Flood (1813), because it is so misattributed in this work, The Whale and His Captors by Henry T. Cheever, from whence Melville must have gotten it. Cheever will be quoted in his own right below. Incidentally, the Bunyan Holy War extract (#22 above) seems likely to have been borrowed from Cheever’s book as well.

shoal, n.
I know this to mean:
A place where the water is of little depth; a shallow; a sand-bank or bar.
but it also means:
1. A large number of fish, porpoises, seals, whales, etc. swimming together; = SCHOOL n.

trackless, a.
Without a track or path; pathless; not marked by a track; untrodden.
Just checking.

front, n.
1. a. = FOREHEAD 1. Now only poet. or in highly rhetorical language.

54. Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834), English writer, opening lines of a satirical poem, The Triumph of the Whale (1812). The whole thing mocks George IV, the current Prince of Wales. Get it? If you don’t get it, here’s how the poem ends: “This (or else my eyesight fails), / This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES.” Get it?

Io
A Greek and Latin exclamation of joy or triumph; sometimes in Eng. as n., an utterance of ‘Io!’, an exultant shout or song. Also Io pæan: see PÆAN.

paean, n.
1. Ancient Greek Hist. A solemn song or chant; spec. a hymn of thanksgiving for deliverance, victory in battle, etc., addressed to Apollo (or occas. another god or goddess); (hence also) a war song invoking such victory.
io paean: an utterance of ‘O Paean!’, ‘Thanks to Paean!’ (an exclamation of joy or triumph addressed to Apollo).

finny, a.
3. a. Of or pertaining to fish.

55. Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket.
Obed Macy (1762-1844), The History of Nantucket: Being a Compendious Account of the First Settlement of the Island by the English, Together with the Rise & Progress of the Whale Fishery (1835). Not online. The notes say that Melville might have gotten this from J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (1846), to be referenced elsewhere in Moby-Dick, which however is also not online.

56. Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), in The Village Uncle (1835), collected in the second edition of the Twice-Told Tales (1841).

57. Ibid.
Also from the second edition of Twice-Told Tales, in the story Chippings With a Chisel (1838). The narrator is in the company of a tombstone-carver. The original has “An elderly lady” instead of “she” (and “before” instead of “ago”); Melville has, oddly, changed the quote to be less self-contained.

58. Cooper’s Pilot.
James Fenimore Cooper (1759-1851), The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (1823). In Chapter XVII. (Google Print / UVA).

oil, n.
oil-butt now rare, a butt or barrel containing oil; (fig.) a whale containing much oil.

59. Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.
Johann Peter Eckermann (1792-1854), essentially Goethe’s Boswell. His book is called Conversations With Goethe (1836-1848), and this is from the entry for Sunday, January 31, 1830. Goethe, unfortunately, doesn’t comment on the introduction of whales (“and sea monsters”) on stage.

60. Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex…
Owen Chase (1798-1869), First Mate on the Essex, in his 1821 account of the 1820 incident, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. A major inspiration for Moby-Dick. I find to my surprise that the incident was the subject of a recent non-fiction bestseller in the Longitude vein, In the Heart of the Sea (2000). The original narrative isn’t online but it’s searchable in two different editions on Amazon. The context of the quote is: The ship has already been completely wrecked and half-sunk, and the crew has all abandoned it. All of this has happened unbenknownst to the captain, who was off in another one of the small boats. He comes back and says, horrified, “Oh my God! where is the ship?” Then this exchange occurs.

61. Elizabeth Oakes Smith. The Drowned Mariner.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893), writer, abolitionist, feminist. Opening lines of The Drowned Mariner (before 1845).

shroud, n.
1. A set of ropes, usually in pairs, leading from the head of a mast and serving to relieve the latter of lateral strain; they form part of the standing rigging of a ship. a. pl.

phosphor, n.
Also -pher, -fer, -phore.
2. Anything that phosphoresces, or emits light without sensible heat: = PHOSPHORUS 2. In mod. use, any substance exhibiting phosphorescence or fluorescence, esp. one that is an artificially prepared solid.
Does she just mean the appearance of reflected moonlight in the water, or is there some actual substance implied?

62. Scoresby.
William Scoresby (1789-1857), English explorer-scientist. From two different places in An Account of the Arctic Regions and Northern Whale Fishery (1820). The edition linked to is a slightly re-edited one, from 1849, which may well have been Melville’s source, since the quotes appear in the given order there (they’re reversed in the original). Google has the original edition, too, but only Volume I. The first quote comes from Volume II. Melville, by the way, has ratcheted “two or three miles” up to “three or four miles.”

English miles
Miles as we know them (5280 feet, 1760 yards) were apparently established by statute under Elizabeth I and are thus “English miles” or “Statute miles.” 10440 yards = 5.93 miles. The point here may well be that he is not measuring in nautical miles, which are longer (1852 m). 10440 yards = 5.15 nautical miles.

63. Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale, 1839.
Thomas Beale (1807-1849), doctor, The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839). The first half is from Part I Chapter XIII: Chase and capture of the Sperm Whale. The second half is from Part I Chapter II: Habits of the Sperm Whale – Feeding.

habitude
1. Manner of being or existing; constitution; inherent or essential character; mental or moral constitution, disposition; usual or characteristic bodily condition, temperament: = HABIT

64. Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, 1840.
Frederick Debell Bennett (1806-1859), another doctor, in Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, From the Year 1833-1836. (1840). The quote is from Appendix Chapter VI: Dangers of the Sperm Fishery.

cachalot
A genus of whales, belonging to the family Catodontidæ, distinguished by the presence of teeth in the lower jaw. The Common Cachalot, or Sperm Whale, which yields spermaceti, grows to the length of 70 feet, and has a head nearly one-half of the length of the body; it occurs in all seas, but its home is the Pacific Ocean.
So, like he says: Sperm Whale.

65. J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, 1846.
Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (1846). The excerpt is from Chapter VIII. By the way, these last several excerpts, and some others here, have all been linked from the same guy’s extremely useful site full of period whaling sources. Several of the works listed above as unavailable online are, according to his site, upcoming additions. So stay tuned here for, say, the Obed Macy History of Nantucket. Although he seems not to have updated in two years. Hm. Maybe don’t stay tuned then. Still a great general Moby-Dick reference.

masthead, n.
1. a. Naut. The head or highest part of a mast; esp. the head of the lower mast, as a place for observation, or the highest part of the whole mast, as a place for flying a flag, (formerly) for punishment, etc.

point, n.
9. Each of the equidistant points on the circumference of the mariner’s compass, indicated by one of the thirty-two rays drawn from the centre, which serve to particularize the part of the horizon whence the wind is blowing or in the direction of which an object lies.

lee, n.
2. a. Chiefly Naut. The sheltered side of any object; hence the side (of a ship, the land, an eminence, etc.) that is turned away from the wind.

bowes – b-o-o-o-s!
No idea. Is this just the word “blows” mutating as the speaker gets more and more excited? I think it is; I looked up bows (and “bowes”) but there’s nothing meaningful there. Please let me know if you understand this differently (or better).

66. Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by Lay and Hussey, survivors. A.D. 1828
The first sentence of A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe of Nantucket in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 (1828), by William Lay (1805?-?) and Cyrus M. Hussey (1805-1829), the only non-mutineer non-massacred crew members. They were stranded in the Marshall Islands for two years as prisoners of the natives after a more-or-less crazed megalomaniacal crewmate led a bloody mutiny and tried to start his own empire there, or something. A wild story. You get two different options if you want to read a Barnes & Noble-ready recent retelling. Poe almost definitely used this text as a source in writing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

transaction
3. That which is or has been transacted; an affair in course of settlement or already settled; a piece of business; in pl. doings, proceedings, dealings. Also fig.

67. Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennet.
Daniel Tyerman (1773-1828) and George Bennet (1776-?), missionaries sent by the London Missionary Society to report on whether they were making any progress, in their Journal of Voyages and Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq. (1831). The book itself isn’t anywhere to be found online, but I found the quote itself on page 39 of yet another Barnes & Nobling. The “he” of the quote is a Captain Stavers, and the Barnes & Noble author seems to feel that he was probably just trying to intimidate our poor missionaries.

lance, n.
1. a. A weapon, consisting of a long wooden shaft and an iron or steel head, held by a horseman in charging at full speed, and sustained formerly by a rest, now by a strap, through which the arm is passed.
2. A similar weapon, used for various purposes, e.g. for spearing fish; also in the whale-fishery, with modifying prefixes, as bomb-, gun-, hand-lance, an instrument for killing the whale, after he has been harpooned and wearied out.

68. Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech…
Daniel Webster (1782-1852), in Remarks in the Senate of the United States, on the Application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket (May? 1828). The published version of the speech is not from a written draft but is a reconstructed third-person account from the reporter’s notes, hence “report of.” The Senatorial context for this speech baffles me with its dullness – having ultimately (I think) sorted it all out, to no particular end, I’ll just say that Webster is explaining the economic importance of the whaling industry and thus the significance of a perhaps-unimportant-seeming “internal improvements” project like a breakwater at Nantucket; this in the context of a larger debate about the system by which funds are allocated for public works. Important as that topic may be, it’s still about the dullest thing I can possibly think of.

breakwater
1. Anything that breaks the force of the waves at a particular place, esp. a solid structure of rubble and masonry erected to form or protect a harbour, etc.

69. The Whale and His Captors…
Henry T. Cheever (1814-1897), travel writer / missionary, in The Whale and His Captors; or, The Whalemen’s Adventures, and The Whale’s Biography, as Gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the “Commodore Preble” (1849). In Chapter IX: Episodes in the Fortunes of Whalemen
(text / original). A whale has suddenly leaped out of the water and come down on a small boat, smashing it in half, and the crew, having pulled themselves out of the water, realizes why one guy is missing.

70. Life of Samuel Comstock [the mutineer], by his brother, William Comstock. Another version of the Whale-ship Globe narrative.
Exactly as it says – you remember the Globe mutiny from #66 above. The title of this work, in its slightly fuller version, is The Life of Samuel Comstock, The Terrible Whaleman (1840). He’s the crazy guy. Not online.

71. McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary.
John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1864), economist, A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical and Historical of Commerce and Commercial Navigation (1832). Not online. But. Here’s the definition of “Whale Fishery” in an 1833 encyclopedia that paraphrases what is clearly the same source. As does this article from 1846, possibly at one remove. In any case, I feel pretty comfortable assuming that the quote comes from McCulloch’s entry on “Whale Fishery.”

72. From “Something” unpublished.
The amazing internet notwithstanding, this is still untraceable. This article assumes this is Melville’s comment on the preceding extract, which does seem likely. However, having just seen that McCulloch’s “haunts of the whale” sentence found its way into several other texts, I could believe that some other author found the same quote and made the same comment. But then why so coy about the source? I’m just going to assume it’s by Melville. Is “something” the as-yet unpublished manuscript of Moby-Dick and he’s chicken-before-egg “extracting” it from the very spot in which it stands? Or is it actually from some other Melville effort that never otherwise saw the light of day? No way to know. Moving on.

73. Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.
Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), naval officer and explorer (and according to Wikipedia, an influence on the character of Captain Ahab), known for having led the 1838-1842 United States Exploring Expedition of the Pacific. The quote is from the resulting publication, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1845), in Volume V Chapter XII: Currents and Whaling.

under short sail
I can’t find anyone who wants to outright define this for me, but a little research shows it to mean just what it sounds like: the sails are shortened (partially tied up) to slow the ship. The no-doubt-upcoming vocab word in this case is

reef, v.
1. a. trans. To reduce the extent of (a sail) by taking in or rolling up a part and securing it.

74. Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.
Robert Pierce (Pearse?) Gillies (1788-1858), British?, Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean (1826). Not online and, by Google’s reckoning, very much forgotten.

75. Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-ship Hobomock.
This is a bit of a mess. This same article more or less sorts it out. Basically, the first edition had “Hobomack,” but there was never a ship Hobomack, just a “Hobomok.” The present editorial choice is based, I suppose, on the guess that Melville chose to spell it this way but his “o” was mistaken. However, the whole thing is wrong because no such incident ever took place on the Hobomok, though similar incidents took place on other ships. Melville has gotten his ships confused. The assumption in that article then seems to be that since it’s so contaminated by mistakes, Melville must have concocted the whole quote, but I sense a “badly cited note-taking” theme emerging here and would bet that this was copied out of a newspaper account of something else, which Melville later labeled from memory, incorrectly. The internet is bigger than all of us but it still doesn’t have every page of every obscure 19th-century newspaper fully text-searchable. At least not for me.

76. Cruise in a Whale Boat.
James A. Rhodes, A Cruise in a Whale Boat, by a party of fugitives (1848). Not online and very rare.

77. Miriam Coffin or The Whale Fishermen.
Joseph C. Hart (1798-1855), Miriam Coffin, or The Whale-Fishermen (1834). The first novel about Nantucket whaling. Seems to be about the tragedy of the fact that when whaling men are away at sea, their damnably female wives have to handle their financial affairs and are liable to lose everything. Volume 2 Chapter X. In the original sentence, the whale rises “with inconceivable velocity,” but Melville cut that; I guess he could conceive of it. The whale is about to come down on the ship and sink it.

78. A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.
Ribs and Trucks, from Davy’s Locker; Being Magazine Matter Broke Loose, and Fragments of Sundry Things Inedited (1842), by “W.A.G.” Rare stuff, not online. One of the sources I found attributes the work to Horatio Hastings Weld (1811-1888), editor and writer, so maybe that’s who W.A.G. is.

ribs and trucks
trucks, n.
2. Naut. b. One of the small wooden blocks through which the rope of a parrel is threaded to prevent its being frayed against the mast.

ribs, n.
9. Naut. b. ribs of the parrel, ribs and trucks (see quots.).
1867 SMYTH Sailor’s Word-bk., Ribs and Trucks, used figuratively for fragments. Ibid., Ribs of a Parrel,..the ribs were pieces of wood, each about one foot in length, having two holes in them through which the two parts of the parrel-rope are reeved with a bull’s-eye between.

parrel, n.
Naut. 1. A sliding band of rope or metal attaching a spar or sail to a mast while allowing it vertical movement.

Try this diagram to help put it all together.

79. Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Voyage of a Naturalist Round the World (or A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World) is one of several names under which the work now commonly known as Voyage of the Beagle was published, though the original title was actually Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the countries visited during the voyage round the world of H.M.S. Beagle (1839) on the journey that lasted from 1831 to 1836. The excerpt is from Chapter X and takes place in Tierra del Fuego.

80. Wharton the Whale Killer.
Harry Halyard, Wharton the Whale-Killer, or, The Pride of the Pacific: A Tale of the Ocean (1848). I get the impression it was a children’s book. It’s not online, but check out the great titles of Harry’s other works. Also, I have good reason to believe “Harry Halyard” is a pseudonym.

stern, v.
2. trans. To propel a boat stern foremost; also intr. to go stern foremost.
In this sense developed from the whaling term stern all, the order to back off after an harpoon has been entered, where stern originally = ASTERN.

81. Nantucket Song.
This little rhyme appears twice in Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (#65 above); once as a toast, in Chapter II, and then as the chorus of a song, “Captain Bunker,” in Chapter VII. The wordings are a tiny bit different, and the present version sort of averages the two. This song will appear in full in Chapter XL of Moby-Dick.There were quite a few Captain Bunkers out of Nantucket.

82. Whale Song.
This forms the epigraph to Cheever’s Whale and His Captors (see #69 above).


Whew. I won’t deny I’m glad to be done with that. But I don’t regret it!

Well, partially I do: when I was at the very end of compiling the above, I found another useful piece of Google-cached frontmatter from that unpublished edition of Moby-Dick: a list of Melville’s sources. Most of these I had already worked out for myself, but seeing them it was clear that the bibliography-style list was a genuinely helpful service to the reader – and that, having found all these online texts, I might well have created a similar concise resource in html, rather than piling it all on as above. So I’m just going to whip one off now. Then I get to read Chapter 1. I’ve earned it!

Another note, an important one – I recognize that by posting all this stuff, I’m creating pages that will send a call out to Moby-Dick-interested parties, through Google. I have to imagine that there may be a variety of Moby-Dick readers and perhaps even a couple {gulp} serious Melville scholars passing through these parts as time passes. So, to those of you who are just here for the whale and don’t know or care who I am, a crucial disclaimer: This is a personal site and this is just something I’m doing for fun, as an exercise to accompany my unscholarly, inexpert, run-of-the-mill “someone-gave-me-this-book-so-I’m-reading-it” reading of Moby-Dick. My only research tool is Google and my standards vary greatly with my patience, which varies with my whims, which are most definitely not acceptable sources for a term paper. Though it makes me feel better about all this wasted time to think that it might have some kind of value for others, I am not making any claims about the accuracy or relevance of anything I post here. In fact I am explicitly claiming that these posts are 100% about my reading of Moby-Dick that began in February of 2006, and for all I know, no other. You turn this into a reference at your own risk! Corrections are eagerly invited – but not complaints.

Okay, except for that online bibliography of sources thing I just mentioned – that’ll be a resource that I’ll stand by. It’s just gonna be links, after all. Coming right up.

February 18, 2006

Moby-Dick vocabulary, i

I read Moby-Dick very badly back in high school. Which is to say I only read probably 1/4 of the text, and my selection included the beginning and the end. Now, because I’ve received a lovely lovely copy for my birthday, I have the urge to do it right. Excessively right – no proceeding until I’m sure I know what everything means. “Means” in the most literal sense. Like I have to understand all the words. Not holding myself to a high enough standard in this respect, I believe, has been a major impediment to my enjoyment of many books. I am not alone in having suffered from the white-lie self-delusion of “okay sure fine I get the idea.”

So I’m writing down everything that I need to look up. I expect this to take about a year, maybe more. Actually, I expect to abandon this effort before I come anywhere near completing it. Usually when I start doomed OCD projects like this, their abortive fruits end up lost in the bowels of my personal computer (abortive -> fruits -> bowels?), but now that I have this lovely forum, you’re all beneficiaries. And you can share in the shame of it all, too.

The following will be incomprehensible without a copy of Moby-Dick. Like this one. Or this one. Read along with me, at my sub-glacial pace! Until I quit!

Here you go, internet.

ETYMOLOGY

usher, n.
4. An assistant to a schoolmaster or head-teacher; an under-master, assistant-master. Now rare.

Hackluyt
Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616), author of several important works on travel and exploration, including The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589/1598-1600). Melville’s quote comes from this section on Iceland (text version / original edition), where it would seem to actually be from the pen of one Arngrímur Jónsson (1568-1648). The language in question is, as you might have guessed, Icelandic.

Richardson’s Dictionary
A New Dictionary of the English Language, by Charles Richardson, published in 1837. Richardson’s dictionary had no definitions, only quotations. In this sense, a precursor to the OED.

Incidentally, neither the current Merriam-Webster nor the current OED specifically mentions derivation from “roundness,” “to roll,” or “to wallow” in its etymology for whale.

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee.
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan.

Fegee is obviously just Melville’s spelling of Fiji, by which he means the language Fijian. Erromangoan is now Erromangan, a language of Erromango, in Vanuatu, one of the most language-dense nations in the world. Melville’s source for these is presumably personal experience, and no doubt things have changed a lot since he was there, but Melville’s words seem to derive from Polynesian languages, and Erromangan and Fijian seem to be rather different beasts. But frankly it’s a complicated mess down there and I’m not about to work it out.

But I will go a bit further, because I just came across some guy’s textual notes, apparently for a forthcoming edition of Moby-Dick, hiding in the Google cache, and here’s what he says:

Etymology: Melville’s list of non-English language words for “whale” is not entirely correct. The Hebrew word is particularly garbled. Both American and British editions print the letters nh (nun and he), or “hen” (as read from right to left), which has a number of meanings, none of which is “whale” or “leviathan.” HM’s source was no doubt Kitto’s Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, which gives the letters nt (nun and tav), or “tan,” as “whale,” even though the actual Hebrew word for whale is “tanin” or “tanim.” Chances are HM intended Kitto’s erroneous word “tan” but his printer gave him “hen.” The NN [Northwestern-Newberry, 1988] edition corrects the text to “tan”; however, LCE [Longman Critical Edition, forthcoming!] retains the original to underscore this textual problem. … The Greek in both American and British versions is rendered in a non-standard typeface and seems to begin with the letter chi; however, it is, in fact, a kappa, which is proper. LCE follows this original Greek transcription. It corrects “whœl” to “whæl” for the Anglo-Saxon entry. However, it does not correct “Hvalt” (Danish for “arched”) to “Hval” (“whale”), nor HM’s confusion of Dutch for German, nor the repetition of “Whale” for the Icelandic (instead of “Hvalur”); all of which are revised in the NN edition. The Fegee and Erromangoan words are either sailor talk or HM’s invention; the Polynesian for whale is actually “pahua” or “palaoa.”

First of all: guy who wrote that, if find yourself reading this and you want me to take down your as-yet-unpublished notes that you were foolish enough to leave where Google could find them, just leave a comment and I’ll be glad to do so!

Second of all, I am reading from the beautiful University of California Edition, which identifies itself as a sort of preliminary version of the “NN” edition. However, for the Hebrew, I see chet dalet, which is seriously off the mark, apparently a second generation of typesetting error by someone who doesn’t know from Hebrew. However, contrary to that guy’s notes, my research (and instinct) suggests that “tanim” is the plural and “tan” is indeed the correct singular for, say, Jonah’s whale. No?

My edition also, incidentally, seems to have fallen for the Greek error mentioned. It seems to have χήτος instead of κήτος. Hm. I think. Or maybe it’s just a direct reproduction of the confusing font from the original. You can see what I’m seeing by “searching inside the book” on Amazon. (Search for “nuee.”)

Third of all: In chapter 40 of Omoo, Melville writes:

All over these seas, the word “nuee” is significant of quantity. Its repetition is like placing ciphers at the right hand of a numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum.

This is clearly the Polynesian word now written as “Nui” meaning “big” or “great.” And though I can’t find any “pekee” or “pehee,” I do find “pakake” meaning whale. And also (same link) “paikea,” a whale and/or a mythical sea monster. This is also the name of the protagonist in the hit Maori film Whale Rider (2002)! So anyway, I don’t think “sailor talk or HM’s invention” is fair at all – I’m willing to buy that Melville was really trying to get it right but ended up with pehee-nuee-nuee and pekee-nuee-nuee in his attempt to say “really, really big sea monster” in two variants of Polynesian (which Fijian and Erromangan aren’t, quite).

Okay. I have now so totally read page viii of Moby-Dick and nobody could reasonably claim otherwise. Yeah yeah, I thought about it, too. Babel; mortality; civilization; cannibals. Man, language, the eternal. I gotcha. All very Dave Eggers of him to put it on the “Etymology” page, too.

Just vii+576 left to go!