sloop

Etymology

It is borrowed from Dutch sloep, earlier sloepe,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} found also as Danish slup, Swedish slup and Low German slupe.^[3][7] The history of the Dutch word is obscure.^[3][5][8][9] The OED thinks it more probably a borrowing of French chaloupe or Spanish chalupa than their source,^[3] and Barnhart, Merriam-Webster and Etymonline also derive it, probably, from the French word,^[2][6][10] which the American Heritage Dictionary explains as an alteration of earlier chaloppe and which gave English shallop.^[11][2] The Shorter Oxford and Skeat take the opposite view, that the French word came from the Dutch.^[4][12] Another explanation derives the Dutch word from Middle Dutch slūpen (“to glide”),^[13][10][14] akin to Old English slūpan (“to slip, glide”),^[15][14][16] from Proto-Indo-European *sleubh-.^[10][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged vessel: 1629, in a record of the English factories in India.^[3][2][6] Weekley found a small slup or pinnace in Scot's account of Java (1602–05), earlier than the OED's quotations, and thought the word was borrowed from Dutch in the East Indies.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From 1631 to 1719 the word also meant a large open boat, a longboat, a sense now obsolete.^[3][4] From 1676 it was used in the navy for a relatively small warship with guns on the upper deck only, in full a sloop of war;^[3][10] Weekley quotes an older description of sloops as vessels attending the men-of-war, of about 66 tons.^[7] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as a small ship, and in 1773 as one commonly with only two masts.^[17] In the 19th century Smyth noted that the sloop resembled a cutter but with a fixed bowsprit and a jib set on a standing stay.^[18]

Timeline

• 1629 – a small one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged vessel.^[3][2][6]
• 1631 – a large open boat, a longboat (obsolete by 1719).^[3]
• 1676 – a small warship with guns on the upper deck only, a sloop of war.^[3][10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sailboat with one mast set well forward, rigged fore-and-aft with a mainsail and a single jib.^[6][19][3]
2. A sloop of war: a small warship carrying its guns on one deck only.^[6][3][1]
3. (obsolete, 1631–1719) A large open boat; a longboat.^[3][4][6]

Related words

• shallop
• chalupa

Usage notes

Collins distinguishes the sloop from the cutter by the position of its mast, about a third of the boat's length from the bow.^[19] A separate sloop, of unknown origin, is a sled or pair of runners for hauling logs, recorded in American dictionaries from 1891 and in Canada,^[3][6][4] with a verb meaning to haul logs down steep slopes on one;^[6] the Dictionary of Canadian English thinks it probably the same word as the boat.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
14. ^ a b Webster's New World College Dictionary (2014), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
15. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
16. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ Smyth, W. H. (1867), The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, London: Blackie and Son
19. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ Dollinger, Stefan, ed., A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (online), Vancouver: University of British Columbia, dchp.arts.ubc.ca