"Lazarette" etymology
Marc Romines
the pretentious, false-sophisticated air of a promotional brochure. But it
could have long-standing nautical usage? Also, it seems the proper spelling
is either "lazaret" (one "t" no "e") or "lazaretto" (with an "o"). So, the
plural would be "lazarets" or "lazarettos".
Webster's: laz.a.ret.to or laz.a.ret \.laz-*-'ret-(.)o-\ \-'ret, -'re-t\ n
[It dial. lazareto, alter. of nazareto, fr. Santa Maria di Nazar]et, church
in Venice that maintained a hospital; usu lazaretto 1: a hospital for
contagious diseases 2: a building or a ship used for detention in quarantine;
usu lazaret 3: a space in a ship between decks used as a storeroom. [So
the usage is correct.]
Fyi, the original use is a quarantined leper or plague-house, as follows,
from the Oxford English Dictionary:
Under "lazaret":
lazaret lazare;t. Also 7 lazarett, 8-9 lazarette, lazzaret. a. Fr.
lazaret, ad. Ital. lazzaretto, now lazzeretto: see next.
1. lazaretto 1.
* 1611 Cotgr., Lazaret, a Lazaret, or Spittle for Lazers.
* 1667 Lond. Gaz. No. 135/2 The Grand Visier..has given order
for..raising a Battery near the Lazaret.
* 1682 Wheler Journ. Greece i. 16 A large Lazarett, as the Italians
call a Pest-house.
* 1783 Hamilton in Phil. Trans. LXXIII. 201 The Lazaret has some
cracks in it.
* 1826 Gazetteer Scot. (ed. 2) 128 A lazaret or hospital for the
reception of sick.
* 1888 Daily News 29 Nov. 4/8 The lazarets where the sick..so often
find their welcome passport to the grave.
transf. and fig.
* A. 1711 Ken Hymnotheo Poet. Wks. 1721 III. 76 In the great Portico
there Night and Day, A Lazaret of wounded Spirits lay.
* 1845 Sir H. Taylor I. Comnenus v. vii. Wks. 1864 II. 235 Man, for
lack of manliness, is made A lazaret for the mind's maladies.
2. lazaretto 2.
* 1721 Act Parl. in Lond. Gaz. No. 5927/5 Such Ship, House, Lazaret,
or other Place.
* 1769 Blackstone Comm. IV. 162 The same penalty also attends
persons escaping from the lazarets, or places wherein quarentine
is to be performed.
* 1800 Act 39 & 40 Geo; III, c. 80 (title) An Act for erecting a
Lazaret on Chetney Hill, in the County of Kent, and for reducing
into one Act the Laws relating to Quarantine.
* 1860 Merc. Marine Mag. VII. 147 Only one box..was left in the
lazarette.
* 1896 Daily News 23 July 5/4 After purging five days' quarantine in a
lazaret.
fig.
* 1819 Byron Juan ii. ccxxv, The liver is the lazaret of bile
3. lazaretto 3.
* 1892 Stevenson & L; Osborne Wrecker xi. 185 From the cabin the
cook was storing tins into the lazarette.
* 1897 R. Kipling Capt. Courageous 185 He rolled to the lazarette
aft the cabin.
Under "lazaretto":
lazaretto
lazaretto l=E6zare;to. Also 7 lazzareto, lazaretta, 8 lazeretto,
lazareta, 9 lazzaretto. ad. Ital. lazzareto (Florio), now lazzeretto,
f. lazzaro lazar.
1. A house for the reception of the diseased poor, esp. lepers; a
hospital, pest-house. (Chiefly used with reference to foreign
countries.)
* 1549 Thomas Hist. Italie 83 a, For the plague there is a
house..two miles from Venice, called the Lazaretto.
* 1609 W. Biddulph in T. Lavender Trav. cert. Englishmen 6 The
Lazaretta [at Zante], which is a place like vnto the pest house in
More-fields.
* 1789 Mrs. Piozzi Journ. France I. 77 The Lazaretto..remains a
standing monument of his piety.
* 1822-56 De Quincey Confess. (1862) 31 Bare as the walls of a poor
house or lazaretto.
* 1874 Green Short Hist. x. Sect.1. 722 His longing..led him to
examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East.
2. A building, sometimes a ship, set apart for the performance of
quarantine.
* 1605 B. Jonson Fox iv. i. (1607) I. 2 b, Where they vse To lie out
forty, fifty dayes, sometimes, About the Lazaretto, for their
triall.
* 1615 G. Sandys Trav. (1621) 6 When they haue Pratticke, they are
enforced to vnlade at the Lazaretto.
* 1615 G. Sandys Trav. 227 To be conueyed by him vnto the Lazaretta,
there to remaine for thirtie or fortie dayes before I could be
admitted into the Citie.
* 1785 Paley Mor. Philos. (1818) II. 163 Conveyed to a lazaretto by
an order of quarantine.
* 1853 Felton Fam. Lett. xxiv. (1865) 210 We could not shake hands;
for that would have sent him to the lazaretto for twenty-four
hours, as a plague-stricken person.
3. Naut. `A place parted off at the fore part of the 'tween decks, in
some merchantmen, for stowing provisions and stores in' (Adm. Smyth
1867).
* 1711 in W. Sutherland Shipbuild. Assist. 161.
* 1783 Colebrooke Let. in Life (1873) 7 The Duke of Athol, Indiaman,
took fire by neglect of the steward in drawing off rum in the
lazareta.
* 1799 in Naval Chron. I. 303 The fire must be in the lazaretto
below.
* C. 1850 Rudim. Navig. (Weale) 129.
Larry KN4IM
wrote:
>I'm curious who started calling cockpit lockers "lazarettes"? The word has
>the pretentious, false-sophisticated air of a promotional brochure. But it
>could have long-standing nautical usage? Also, it seems the proper spelling
>is either "lazaret" (one "t" no "e") or "lazaretto" (with an "o"). So, the
>plural would be "lazarets" or "lazarettos".
>
Sounds like we have an eNtomology problem, not an etymology
problem....a few bugs in our language!
larry...Wonder if they used to store the dead bodies in the Laz?
Michael Corman
>
> I'm curious who started calling cockpit lockers "lazarettes"? The word has
> the pretentious, false-sophisticated air of a promotional brochure. But it
> could have long-standing nautical usage? Also, it seems the proper spelling
> is either "lazaret" (one "t" no "e") or "lazaretto" (with an "o"). So, the
> plural would be "lazarets" or "lazarettos".
>
<definition snipped>
The following is copied from an excellent site with well written
articles on a number of unusual terms from nautical use - well worth a
visit!! (No, I have no connection to the site - I just happened to be
wandering the web and stumbled across it!)
http://www.yacht-volant.org/seaterms.html
From article 5, Heads, Lazarettes, and more...
"When I first heard of a lazarette, I thought to myself, "Why was a
cockpit locker given a French name?" Surprisingly, this
turned out to be of Hebrew by way of Italian origin.
Like most European cities in past centuries, Italian cities had their
share of plagues and other epidemics. The Italian
maritime states, most notably Venice and Genoa, would send the sick to
quarantine ships in an attempt to protect the
townspeople from the disease. A quarantine ship was called a lazaretto.
From a 1953 dictionary, I learned that lazaretto was an Italian word
meaning leprosy. This has its origins with Lazarus
whom the Bible says was raised from the dead by Jesus. Lazarus is the
Romanized form of the Old Hebrew name El
Azar, which means "He Who Is Helped By God."
Eventually people recognized that quarantine ships needed to be
contained in a separate quarantine anchorage. These
quarantine anchorages became known as lazarettos, after the quarantine
ships. If a ship with disease aboard were to visit
a relatively healthy port, she would be sent to a lazaretto. If a
healthy ship visited a port having an active epidemic, she
would go to a reverse quarantine anchorage. In this lazaretto, the crew
would be protected from the disease ashore.
While there, they would discharge their cargo onto smaller boats manned
by locals without physical contact with them.
The master of a vessel would often have a box in his cabin for important
papers, money, pistols or other items that he
wanted to keep away from the crew. The box would be kept locked. Given
the dubious nature of most crew, the box
was always kept aft, usually in the master’s quarters. With the crew
normally forbidden to go aft to the officer’s quarters
without permission and supervision, the master could keep a good eye on
the box. The box was, in a sense,
"quarantined" from the crew. However, it was too small to be called a
lazaretto. Instead, it was given the diminutive form:
lazarette. Eventually any lockable storage box in the aft portion of the
boat became known as a lazarette. Since cockpits
are usually aft, cockpit lockers are now known as lazarettes."
Also from that site:
This is a collection of articles on the nautical origin of common
phrases. All are written by Bear Downing, and are
copyrighted. You are welcome to apply any of these articles to your own
personal use. Please do NOT publish any
part of these articles or apply any part of them to any non-personal use
without the express written concent of
the author.
Mike Corman
cor...@pfizer.com
Jack /CAST-AWAYS
>
> I'm curious who started calling cockpit lockers "lazarettes"? The word has
> the pretentious, false-sophisticated air of a promotional brochure. But it
>
Anyone with a French Dictionary??
--
CAST-AWAYS
Used Sail Loft and Marine Surplus
http://www.CAST-AWAYS.com
916-487-1481
Rich Mechaber
back from the dead, after spending half an hour in our
trawler's lazarette (held water tanks, extra chain, used
oil, hydraulic oil, spare jerry of diesel, old wet rags,
etc.).
Jim Mitchell
Lazarus guy.
After he was raised from the dead Lazarus went on to be Bishop of Cyprus for
(reportedly) another 90 years.
Nice work if you can get it - and a genuinely odd tid-bit of worthless
knowledge.
Jim
m/v Nonchalant
Rich Mechaber <lo...@ttlc.net> wrote in message
news:376BD0DE...@ttlc.net...
Peio
Michael Corman a écrit :
>Marc Romines wrote:
>> I'm curious who started calling cockpit lockers "lazarettes"?
(...)
>The following is copied from an excellent site with well written
>(...)
>http://www.yacht-volant.org/seaterms.html
>
>From article 5, Heads, Lazarettes, and more...
>
>"When I first heard of a lazarette, I thought to myself, "Why was a
>cockpit locker given a French name?" Surprisingly, this
>turned out to be of Hebrew by way of Italian origin.
>(...)
>From a 1953 dictionary, I learned that lazaretto was an Italian word
>meaning leprosy. This has its origins with Lazarus
>whom the Bible says was raised from the dead by Jesus. Lazarus is the
>Romanized form of the Old Hebrew name El
>Azar, which means "He Who Is Helped By God."
True, except the last statement :
The italian "lazaretto" comes from the spanih "lazaro", which means
"beggar".
In the Middle Age, leprous were all beggar.
Pierre
Haize Egoa.
Jon V.
other statements...
The root word of lazarette is leper. [yeah, we already knew that.]
On larger (by yacht standards) ships, there was usually an aft cabin, a
small enclosed space without passages to the rest of the ship. This aft
cabin served several duties, but one of the most important was as the
ship's hospital. The smoother motion of that part of the boat being the
real reason it was placed aft (any part of the ship *could* have been
blocked off, if they wanted to).
If there had been a concept of sanitary practice, it would have been
called the sanitarium... but all the folks really knew was that there were
sickos around, it didn't pay to be too close to them, and you couldn't
just throw your sister's husband overboard because he was sneezing and
flaking. Plageretto doesn't sound too hot, so they used the name of one of
the most famous scourges and referred to the hospital as "The place where
the lepers get put until we can find a shore to dump them on."
Needless to say, that mouthful didn't last long, and in a fit of
constriction it was shortened to lazarette.
As decked & cabined boats got smaller, the lazarette itself shrunk... and
nowadays it is not unusual to find a lazarette that wouldn't hold a sick
cat. Fortunately, most communicable diseases nowadays are either low
mortality, or sexually transmitted, so the issue is moot. Just wear
protection and you will probably not have a problem.
....I was seven at the time, and you can imagine how shocked I was when
that was explained to me... it left serious emotional scars... but I've
gotten over them and I'm told that my performance is normal again. Thanks
for your concern.
If you believe the people who explained it to me, the Lazarette is only
the aft-most compartment... not the cockpit lockers under the sides, but
just the one compartment furthest towards the back of the boat.
My own boat's lazarette is small enough that I am thinking of converting
it to an icebox... it would only be big enough to hold a couple of
six-packs, but that is better than having to go down below to get a drink.
-Jon
=============================================================================
| Jon Valesh | http://www.valesh.com/~jon |
| the Valesh group | http://www.valesh.com/ |
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Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is,
however, a rather archaic use of the word. Should one of you boys happen
upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you
have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
Steven Podowitz
lazarette refers typically and only to the locker space right astern
and belowdeck. In larger ships there are lazarette cabins; more
typically, it is used for storage, or, in a pich, for the imprisonment
of the odd etymologist who may bumble from the library down to the
sea. It is typically a lightless and cramped place, much like the
brain of some etymologists. Often as musty.
Impressive job, actually, your libretto to the lazaretto, worthy of
praise and thanks.
What about other nauticalia like "Haaarrrr!" and "Avast!"? Where did
"Shiver me timbers!" come from?
Glenn Ashmore
Steven Podowitz wrote:
> What about other nauticalia like "Haaarrrr!" and "Avast!"? Where did
> "Shiver me timbers!" come from?
There is a book called "When a loose canon whips a dead horse" that has a lot of
that etymology stuff on all sorts of nautical phrases.
--
Glenn Ashmore
I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack there of)
at: http://www.mindspring.com/~gashmore
Mary anne
would offer to sell her wares her mates would often involuntarily utter,
"Well now, shiver me timbers.".
Steven Podowitz <podo...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:37752803...@news.mindspring.com...