I finished "The Old Man and the Sea" the other day, but being such a short story and therefore a small and lightweight book it was prone to be lost amongst my mess. I wish I'd found it today, so I might have had the comfort to quote here Hemmingway's use of the word "thole" - as a noun in his case. I'd never heard the word before, noun nor verb. But with the book's title in mind I'm sure you can imagine his "thole-pin" oarlock part-of-a-boat sense that was and may well still be common. My concern here with the word I'm obsessing about is that it seems "thole", in the previous sense of "to tolerate", is on the verge(?) of abandonment because, well, "to tolerate" takes its place quite well. Is there some other sense to "thole" that's not encompassed in "tolerate"? Is it fair that we leave the word behind, or is it too late?

I'm not sure I understand. Thole is two different words, i.e., they are homonyms. One for the oarlock gizmo and the other for toleration. The OED (1st ed.) lists the nautical noun first, because it cites an older usage than the other word. Thole, toleration, is related to German Geduld 'patience'.

I used to teach rowing at a summer camp. While the word did not come up often(I haven't taught rowing in 5-6 years, and had to look it up), it is the name used by the book.

Basically, you have two choices, you can call it a thole, or thole-pin, or something like "oarlock pin hole". I wouldn't imagine rowing is common enough that people know this though. For example, the definition of thole uses "gunwale", which I doubt most people know, let alone can pronounce.

I don't know what the terminology is of sculling. Shells might also use tholes.

While looking around, I did find out that scalmus, from Greek σκαλμός (skalmo/s), is the Latin for tholepin.

Thanks zmjezhd. I didn't actually realise they were homonyms. I must admit that with my rather poor research - a google or two and the resulting miss-hits - it seemed to me the sense of the two words was not all that different (in the mind it's not far to go from fulcrum, as the oarlock may be considered, to a point of tolerance). Have you heard the verb used before? Will you thole this silly question of mine?

You're welcome, braket.

quote:

Have you heard the verb used before?

No. I was only familiar with the nautical term, and that second hand.

zmjezhd: "I was only familiar with the nautical term."
I can't honestly say "familiar with", but I too was aware only of the nautical meaning.

seanahan: "you can call it a thole, or thole-pin, or something like "oarlock pin hole". I don't know what the terminology is of sculling. Shells might also use tholes." In checking sculling, I found to my surprise that apparently a thole-pin and an oarlock pin are two different things. As best I can tell, a thole-pin sticks up from the side of the boat (to secure the oar), while an oarlock pin is part of the oar, running downward to meet the boat and hold the oar. My source is the end part of this webpage.

braket: "I wish I'd found it today, so I might have had the comfort to quote here Hemmingway's use of the word 'thole'."

Braket, great to have you with us. Very interesting subject and discussion.

Here is what purports to be a copy of the text. At the end of page 7 is this passage:

The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into the water.
"Good luck old man."
"Good luck," the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark.

Yes, I agree, Wordnerd, this is a very interesting post.

Zmj, I have a question. How does one know that a word is a homonym, rather than being just another definition of a word? For example, we have often said here that there are hundreds of definitions of the word "set." Are they all homonyms? If not, how can you tell? Are the words homonyms when their etymologies are different? Thank you for tholing me with this probably stupid question!

Good question, with no definite answer. Dictionary makers have to decide whether to set words out as:

fair (1) meaning 1.1; meaning 1.2; ...
fair (2) meaning 2.1; ...

or as a single head word. In the case of etymologically different words they should definitely be different heads (fair "market" is not related to fair "blond; beautiful; equal; just; approximate"). However, I doubt many modern users see much connexion between "blond" and "equal". A historical dictionary like the OED would have to show them all as variations on one word, bringing out how the senses developed, but I wouldn't expect a smaller, present-oriented one to.

The technical term for variations between related meanings is polysemy: the mouth of a person, a river, or a jug.

What aput said, Kalleh. The OED has separate entries for words of the same etymological origin, but which are different parts of speech: e.g., noun, adjective, verb. And, they also have different entries for words of different etymological origin, which is for I would call homonyms. The A-H dictionary groups all the parts of speech for words of the same etymological origin into one main entry. There is a great book, which you can probably find in a largish or university library, by Ladislav Zgusta called A Manual of Lexicography. Sidney I. Landau (2001) Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography is a more popular account of dictionaries.

Though not a scottish word, as zmjezhd points out, the Dictionary of the Scots Language has now given me more than enough information on tholing; and if you go for the full entry you'll see tho(i)le quoted beautifully as such: "He bar a sasteing in a boustous poille/ On his braid bak of ony wald he thoile/ Bot for a grot als fast as he mycht draw." My head nearly exploded just at the sight of it. Anyway, look to the left for the topmost "DOST" entry after choosing the full definition, then follow the purple numbers for the various definitions.

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