lagan

Jan. 23rd, 2013 07:31 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (words are sexy)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
lagan (LAG-uhn) - n., anything sunk in the sea with a buoy attached so that it can be recovered.


As opposed to something floating, in which case it would be either flotsam, which fell off the ship when it was wrecked, or jetsam, which was thrown off, usually to lighten it in a crisis. Exactly which matters, because this affects who has salvage rights -- because the buoy shows intent to recover, lagan still belongs to original carrier. If it's on the bottom without a buoy, it's derelict. Lagan (also sometimes spelled ligan) first shows up around 1530, borrowed either from Middle French lagan or its source, Medieval Latin laganum, debris washed up from the sea, possibly of Germanic origin.

---L.

Date: 2013-01-24 06:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thistleingrey.livejournal.com
Um, sorry to keep piping up with OED, but these are interesting words. In this case I could've sworn I'd seen lagan mentioned re: wreck, which wouldn't be true were it really only 1530, and indeed OED2 adduces an English charter in Latin ca. 1200, which has "De ewagio de wrec et lagan."

(Amusingly probably only to me, OED2 s.v. wreck n.1. gives a longer bit from the same charter: "De ewagio de wrec et lagan et de omnibus aliis consuetudinibus.")

Incidentally, now I'm puzzled anent your source(s), since 1200 is contemporaneous with Old French. I mean, we have hardly any written OF before 1200 anyway; isn't MF from C14 or so?
Edited Date: 2013-01-24 06:57 am (UTC)

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