Shelling out for a crab
SOME of my colleagues insist that the best thing about the Rio Olympics was the beach volleyball, but I’d like to make a case for the rowing.
When I say “rowing”, I don’t mean the word that rhymes with “ploughing” — although there was plenty of that sort of rowing over all sorts of things, not least The Mystery of the Green Pool, which should have been the title of an Agatha Christie novel. No, I mean the other sort of rowing, the one that rhymes with “glowing” and refers to the art of propelling a boat through water.
The three forms of “row”, incidentally, come from entirely different places. A row of houses, bookkeeping figures or hedgehogs is derived from the Old English raew, meaning a line or succession of items, which can be traced back to the Old Norse rega, a string.
The kind of row one has with a neighbour who plays Celine Dion loudly on a Sunday morning is of uncertain origin. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “row”, meaning a robust argument, was popularised by Cambridge University students in about 1746. General consensus is that they got it from “rousel”, which in those days was slang for a drinking bout.
Rousel was a shortened form of carousal, meaning revelry of the drunken variety. This is related to carousing but not to be confused with carousel, a merry-go-round nowadays mostly associated with gambling establishments.
The third form of “row” comes from the Old English rowan (to go by water), which derives from the Proto-Indo-European root -ere, which gave most northern languages their verbs for the act of rowing as well as nouns for oars.
But back to the Olympics, where rowing provided not just the hypnotic visual spectacle of fit specimens pulling together in perfect accord (watching person-powered boat races is a fine form of relaxation therapy, if you ask me), nor just an education in Irish diction (in the form of the hilarious interview given by brothers Paul and Gary O’Donovan after winning a silver medal), but a whole new language for those unfamiliar with sculls and strokes.
While paddling in the shallows I came across a website called Row2K.com and read an article titled “Helpful Hints for Journalists Covering Rowing”. The writer exhorted those reporting on the sport to avoid puns such as “oarsome”, “making waves”, “making a splash”, and particularly the terrible headline “Row, row, row your boat”.
After swiftly changing the original title of this column, I went to Rowinghistory.net for a crash course in rowing terminology. I can now tell you with confidence that the terms “crew” and “team” might be interchangeable, but if you ever say “crew team” you will be dunked.
“Rowing with a sweep oar” means rowing with one oar per person. “Sculling with a pair of sculls” means rowing with two oars per person. “Pulling” is used only when the rowers are rowing (or sculling) on open water. Unlike cruise ships, the craft manned by rowers can safely be called boats, but when used for racing a boat is also commonly known as a shell.
What I can’t work out is whether the term “shell” has anything to do with the word “crab” in rowing.
A crab, according to this useful glossary, is “an event when a rower or sculler is unable to extract the oar blade from the water at the finish of the drive (pulling phase of the stroke) and a sloppy stroke occurs”.
This is also referred to as “catching a crab”. But wait, it gets worse. If that’s not a terrifying enough prospect, there is the far worse phenomenon called an “over-the-head crab”. This is when “the oar handle gets caught in the stomach, causing the rower to be catapulted out of the boat”.
If the skill of the scullers wasn’t enough, this proves that rowing is better than beach volleyball. Have you ever seen a volleyballer tripped up by a crab?
If you ever say ‘crew team’ you will be dunked