It was in Maigret book I was reading this morning (A Crime in Holland - one of the best) and made me laugh out loud to the puzzlement of the Kazakh students I was invigilating.

Is it a real word, or was the translator just having a laugh? Would the Americans call it a fannyboat? Was it derrierebateau in the original?

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Originally posted by Graham Nice:
It was in Maigret book I was reading this morning (A Crime in Holland - one of the best) and made me laugh out loud to the puzzlement of the Kazakh students I was invigilating.

Is it a real word, or was the translator just having a laugh? Would the Americans call it a fannyboat? Was it derrierebateau in the original?

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quote:

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bumboat
n. any small boat used for ferrying goods or supplies for sale to a ship at anchor or at a mooring.

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Apparently it's from the Dutch boomschip - canoe.

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

And perhaps haberdasher will remind us of a certain bumboat woman? (I'd forgotten that her name is Mrs. Cripps, for she's much better known by her nickname.)

Aye, Little Buttercup – and well called – for you're the rosiest, the roundest, and the reddest beauty in all Spithead.

And, here's a reference to it.