I’ve done very little sailing in my day, but I’m a huge fan of nautical terminology. I’ve decided to start using some nautical terms at every opportunity.

Some of my favorites:

Yaw
Scuppers
Gunwale
Belay
Abeam
Thwartships

And of course, my favorite: Coxswain.

I encourage everyone to throw the word coxswain into as many conversations as possible, especially in the workplace. I believe the correct pronunciation is “Cox’n” but the phonetic pronunciation works well too.