Avast and Belay

Haul that keel, and, like, whatever.

Dear Word Detective: I have followed your column in the Green Bay Press Gazette for years, and, before that, your father’s column in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. As a now retired Speech/Language Pathologist, I love word study. I just noted this phrase in a local story about the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie coming out: “Avast and belay!” I know these words are of English derivation, but have never heard the “belay” word before. Can you provide some background –”Arrrgh, Matey!”? — Marycarolyn Jagodzinski, Suring, WI.

Hiya. It’s always nice to hear from long-time readers. Incidentally, this is actually the same syndicated column that my father, William Morris, began back in 1956 under the title Words, Wit and Wisdom, which probably makes it one of the longest-running newspaper columns in the US. My mother, Mary D. Morris, actually contributed greatly to the writing of the column from the beginning, but her name didn’t appear on it until the 1970s.

I’m not sure what my parents would have thought about movies based on theme-park rides, but I was actually considering seeing POTC II until I learned that it runs well over two hours. That’s a bit much, although I’ve loved pirate movies ever since I saw Robert Newton’s classic over-the-top portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney’s 1950 movie of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” Incidentally, a good book for anyone interested in the facts behind Hollywood’s pirate fantasies is “Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates,” by David Cordingly.

Although “avast” is considered a classic pirate word by landlubbers, it’s actually been in general nautical use since the 17th century. “Avast” is an order to “stop, cease, hold still,” and comes from the Dutch phrase “houd vast” (meaning “hold fast”), frequently apparently slurred into “hou’vast.”

“Belay” is a natural companion to “avast,” since it means “to fasten or tie up securely,” as one might tie up a ship to a dock. The root sense of “belay” is “to lay something around another thing,” and in the 13th century to “belay” often meant to ornament a jewel, for instance, with a circle of gold. In the 14th century and thereafter, “belay” was often used in a military sense meaning to surround or lie in wait for the enemy. The most common use of “belay” today is the nautical one, in which a line or rope is “belayed,” or wrapped around, a deck cleat or “belaying pin” in order to secure it. (“Belaying pins,” incidentally, are those wooden things often used to knock people out in pirate movies.) “Belay” is also used in mountaineering, where properly secured lines are even more important, in much the same sense.