The Etymology and Early History of Skiff: International waters

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Oxford English Dictionary: OED Online, s.v. skiff, consulted 13 Aug. 2023. To the list of congeners may be added Catalan esquif.2 De Vries, 493, s.v. skib. Kroonen views *skipa- as an early loanword from Lat. scyphus ‘drinking cup’ = Gr. σκύφος m. ‘cup, can’. See further below.3 Pokorny, I.954, s.v. *skeu- (6).4 The direct reflex of Norse skip is Norman eschippe, yet this is met only once, although the verb eschipper ‘to load a ship’ is common.5 Rothwell et al. (eds), Anglo-Norman Dictionary, s.vv. Other Anglo-French (the current designation, replacing Anglo-Norman) nautical terminology includes aucele < Latin navicella, flune, and schaffe.6 Schaffner (ed.), Middle English Dictionary; from about 1450: ‘Scaffus also ben nedfulle on þe see for tyme of werre, ffor þei ben lasse þan galeies or oþer schippes,’ Vegetius MS (1) (Dc 291), 113b, cited from the MED. Complicating matters is the presence in Middle English of skeppe in the sense of basket for grain, malt, coal, alms, etc.; a dry measure varying in size; a beehive. Ultimate origins, here too, are in Proto-Germanic *skipa- in the sense of ‘vessel’.7 Imbs (ed.), Le tresor de la langue francaise, s.v. esquif.8 Hope, Lexical Borrowing in the Romance Languages, 28. The French translation of the Memoires of the papal diplomat Guillaume de Villeneuve also uses esquif to describe a light craft met in Lombardy; Memoires, 95.9 Nicholas, The Pleasant Historie, 8, the translation of Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias y Vida de Hernan Cortés, in which the term esquife is regularly met (pp. 80, 130, 143 in the 1979 edition).10 Smith, A Sea Grammar, 1627, vi, 26.