Pronounced: narr, noun
Notes: I have never heard of this word, but I know a related word
Yesterday’s word
The word cabotage means
- navigation or trade along the coast
- legal restrictions on air transport between points within a country
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1800s
Background / Comments
When I saw our word, I remembered history classes of long ago and remembered one called Cabot; I thought perhaps the word came from him. Researching Cabot shows two men: John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the service of England (Italian name Giovanni Caboto); he discovered the North American mainland in 1497. His son, Sebastian Cabot, was also a navigator and explorer. It made sense, but it was wrong; our word comes from French – a derivative of the word caboter (to sail coastwise), a verb from the Middle French noun cabo, which comes from the Spanish word cabo (headland). Clearly, the first definition is the original definition; I’m not entirely sure how the second definition (the one used in aviation) came into being.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 