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Do You Say Wind Or Wind?


jacloc

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I use the pronunciation as I was told it in 1970 wind as in clock. (By the proprietor of the firm who hired the first boat I used).

 

... and I say wind as in winned, which was how all the born and bred boat people we knew and learnt our trade from pronounced it. Hire boat proprietors were off the bank and pronounced it as they thought it might be pronounced from the written word, not as it was said by working boatmen. (not in the south, anyway)

 

I always assumed it was because you used the wind to help you turn a boat in times before engines came into being, but no-one actually told me that. However I would certainly always take the wind direction into account when "winn-ding", and take the boat around in the direction which gained most benefit from the wind.

 

Tam

Edited by Tam & Di
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... and I say wind as in winned, which was how all the born and bred boat people we knew and learnt our trade from pronounced it. Hire boat proprietors were off the bank and pronounced it as they thought it might be pronounced from the written word, not as it was said by working boatmen. (not in the south, anyway)

 

I always assumed it was because you used the wind to help you turn a boat in times before engines came into being, but no-one actually told me that. However I would certainly always take the wind direction into account when "winn-ding", and take the boat around in the direction which gained most benefit from the wind.

 

Tam

 

I thought all boatmen were off the bank! But that's beside the point.

What did they mean when they said they would winned their boat? Did they mean to turn it? In which case we now pronounce that "wynd" not "winned".

If anybody is so desirous of holding on to archaic traditions do they also eschew engines and rely on horse power, only take their water from a can, in short, not do anything that boaters did not do two centuries ago.

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I thought all boatmen were off the bank! But that's beside the point.

What did they mean when they said they would winned their boat? Did they mean to turn it? In which case we now pronounce that "wynd" not "winned".

If anybody is so desirous of holding on to archaic traditions do they also eschew engines and rely on horse power, only take their water from a can, in short, not do anything that boaters did not do two centuries ago.

No need for you to hang onto any of the archaic traditions if you don't want to. It is entirely your choice.

 

You can even hang your stern line on your tiller pin and stand within the arc of the tiller when steering if you so desire.

 

Then again, isn't the whole canal system so archaic that it should really be filled in and made into something useful like roads?

 

George ex nb Alton retired

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No need for you to hang onto any of the archaic traditions if you don't want to. It is entirely your choice.

 

You can even hang your stern line on your tiller pin and stand within the arc of the tiller when steering if you so desire.

 

Then again, isn't the whole canal system so archaic that it should really be filled in and made into something useful like roads?

 

George ex nb Alton retired

 

Oh sorry for trying to inject a bit of something or other into the debate!

 

Here, let me muddy the waters a little more. Up until the 18th century wind, as in "blow wind and crack your cheeks" was pronounced to rhyme with "mind"

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I thought all boatmen were off the bank! But that's beside the point.

What did they mean when they said they would winned their boat? Did they mean to turn it? In which case we now pronounce that "wynd" not "winned".

If anybody is so desirous of holding on to archaic traditions do they also eschew engines and rely on horse power, only take their water from a can, in short, not do anything that boaters did not do two centuries ago.

 

You pronounce it that way from ignorance. It's not an archaic tradition. I learnt to pronounce it as winned from people who were born and bred on the canal, but they were hardly "archaic" - simply a generation before your time. Just because you have come into a world of boating and heard it pronounced as wine-d does not mean it is "correct" - you have just learned it from other unknowing incomers. You can impose your pronunciations if you wish - there are several words which have a BBC pronunciation which now differ from mine. We ourselves "took our water from a can", but that was only 30 years ago, not exactly 2 centuries!

 

How you connect that with horse-boating is simply beyond my comprehension. You seem to have a very weird idea of canal history. Even canal history seems to be anything older than 20 years.

 

I agree that times change, but it is very sad that there are people coming onto canals who have no interest in the world they are entering and simply blunder into them them with their eyes (and apparently their ears) closed.

Edited by Tam & Di
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I agree that times change, but it is very sad that there are people coming onto canals who have no interest in the world they are entering and simply blunder into them them with their eyes closed.

 

I hardly think that taking an interest in anything can be called "simply blunder(ing) into [anything] with eyes closed! I would apply that to those who accept anything without thought.

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I hardly think that taking an interest in anything can be called "simply blunder(ing) into [anything] with eyes closed! I would apply that to those who accept anything without thought.

 

So where is your thought, that considers working boatmen and their terminology to be something that finished 2 centuries ago? What interest do you have that puts down language that existed only 20 years ago (and probably more recently among those born to canals) as being archaic and not worthy of continuation? That does not appear to me as displaying interest in the world you have entered.

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How do you know that the historic pronunciation of the word didn't mean "to wind" as in turn?

There are many historic pronunciations that are now archaic. For example "latts" for "laths" and "cornish" for "cornice".

 

I hope that you are consistent in your use of archaic words and continue to winned your clock. smile.png

 

John,

This point seems to have gone unnoticed, but is well made and seems central to me. I wish someone would answer it with the same clarity as you made it.

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So where is your thought, that considers working boatmen and their terminology to be something that finished 2 centuries ago? What interest do you have that puts down language that existed only 20 years ago (and probably more recently among those born to canals) as being archaic and not worthy of continuation? That does not appear to me as displaying interest in the world you have entered.

 

Did you miss my post where I pointed out that until the 18th century wind, as in the blowy stuff was pronounced to rhyme with mind?

 

I find it slightly amusing that folk can get so wound up about the pronunciation of a word!

Thank you Coelum Ruat :)

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English is a rapidly changing language with words and pronunciations used today which wouldn't have been used say a decade ago. It is unlikely that the pronunciation of a term can stay frozen.

 

EDIT: To make sense

Edited by Jerra
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It is certainly true that newcomers to the canals seem intent on inventing new words for things that certainly don't make more sense.

 

"Mooring pins" anybody?

 

Pins? No wonder people complain they get pulled out when other boats go past!

 

To answer the question about the origins of the term "to wind", I'm not completely sure anybody can know with total certainty. The fact is that those born and bred on the cut used an expression to mean they were turning their boat around, and pronounced it a certain way. Some people ignorant of that now use a different pronunciation, and I accept that if it gets repeated by enough ignorant people, over time more people may have moved to that than actually say what boaters did.

 

I still think I know what the correct answer to the original question is!

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one of various definitions: to make a turn

 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wend


3. (intransitive, obsolete) To turn; make a turn; go round; veer.


This could also help explain the confusion between winned and w-eye-nd because it is actually neither its a different word entirely

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It is certainly true that newcomers to the canals seem intent on inventing new words for things that certainly don't make more sense.

 

"Mooring pins" anybody?

 

Pins? No wonder people complain they get pulled out when other boats go past!

 

 

OK, so what do you (and others) know them as?

Round here, they were often bars. No-nonsense, nothing namby-pamby ;)

 

Tim

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How do you know that the historic pronunciation of the word didn't mean "to wind" as in turn?

There are many historic pronunciations that are now archaic. For example "latts" for "laths" and "cornish" for "cornice".

 

I hope that you are consistent in your use of archaic words and continue to winned your clock. :)

I still go to Birnigum :)

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Stakes or spikes to me, certainly not pins!

 

Me too, though I quite like Tim's "bars".

 

Obviously the canals and rivers had much regional variations, (I don't think we had "cloughs" in the South for example), so I suppose it is not impossible that even this disputed word for "turning around" was pronounced differently in different regions. I really only know about relatively recent history on the Southern canals, I'll admit.

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It is certainly true that newcomers to the canals seem intent on inventing new words for things that certainly don't make more sense.

 

"Mooring pins" anybody?

 

 

Never mind mooring pins (stakes to me), what about that even worse abomination one hears regularly used these days for a windlass: a "lock key".

 

FFS I've even caught myself doing it!!!!!!

 

And more than once I've heard boaters (usually female ninja.gif ) refer to lock gates as 'doors'.

 

:D

 

MtB

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