Melville and the (American) English Language

One of the many thrills in reading Moby Dick is the opportunity to broaden one's vocabulary.  If, like me, you don't know a boatswain from a bowsprit, you might take a look at the Whale Words Dictionary, offered by the Whale Release & Strandings Organization of Newfoundland and Labrador.  I was happy to read there that a 'melon' is:

the bulbous forehead of Odontoceti cetaceans, which contains oil and is thought to be involved in sound projection

Even more fun, to me, was an article published a few years ago in The Week which listed Melville's contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary, including words which first appeared in print in Moby Dick, such as:

cetology

"Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology."

Moby Dick, 1851

Cetology is that branch of zoology which studies cetaceous animals such as whales, porpoises, and dolphins. The word cetology comes from the Latin cetus, "any large sea creature," which comes from the Greek ketos, "a whale, a sea monster."

Cholo

"It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the words above."

Moby Dick, 1851

That's right, Herman Melville was the first, on record at least, to use Cholo in English. However, he doesn't use it with the sense of a derogatory term for someone perceived to be a lower-class Mexican, or a Mexican or Latino gang member, but to refer to "an Indian or mixed-race person of Latin America." This sense of cholo might come from the Nahuatl xolotl, "dog, mutt."

curio

"But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of ‘balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one."

Moby Dick, 1851

A curio is an unusual or odd piece of art or bric-a-brac, and is short for "curiosity." Bric-a-brac are "small, usually ornamental objects valued for their antiquity, rarity, originality, or sentimental associations." The word comes from the French bric-à-brac, "expressive of confusion."

czarship

"It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding."

Moby Dick, 1851

The word czar is, of course, Russian in origin, but ultimately comes from the Latin Caesar, "Emperor." The title czar was first adopted by the Russian emperor Ivan IV in 1547.

The figurative meaning of "person with dictatorial powers" is from 1866, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and initially referred to President Andrew Johnson.

plum-puddinger

"After listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went up stairs to go to bed."

Moby Dick, 1851

Plum-puddinger refers to either a whaling ship that goes out on short voyages or a crew member on such a ship. While Melville's is the earliest recorded use of this term, we assume it was common in nautical vernacular before then.

The plum-puddinger is so called because "because the crew has fresh provisions and an abundant supply of plum-pudding," a staple apparently for 19th-century shipmen.

slobgollion

"It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance."

Moby Dick, 1851

Slobgollion is whaling slang for a substance found in sperm whale oil, says the OED. In Moby Dick, Melville describes such a substance as "an ineffably oozy, stringy affair," which is obtained "after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting."

While the origin of slobgollion is unknown, earlier meanings of slob include mud or slime, while the second part of the word could be influenced by gullion, a mean and worthless wretch, or gollin, a kind of fish.

A variation is slumgullion, which in addition to fish offal refers to a cheap and watery drink — first used by Mark Twain in Roughing It — as well as a kind of thin stew.

I challenge you to use 'slobgollion' in a sentence!