s---k pot, 1805 (?)

[Laurence Horn]

An attempt at resending this; please excuse any possible double posting...


At 10:12 AM -0400 9/6/10, George Thompson wrote:
>  >From the report to his owners by the captain of a ship taken by
>privateers, 1805:
>***  We took the privateer to be the Felicity (0ne of the fleet)
>until the moment she run the bloody flag up and commenced a very
>heavy fire of musquetry (upwards of sixty) she had ehr graplings and
>s---k pot to her yard arm, she shot up our windward quarter
>instantly and made an attempt to board. . . .
>N-Y Commercial Advertiser, March 21, 1805, p. 3, col. 2
>
>the dash I have represented as --- is in the paper a single long
>dash, so it doesn't indicate how many letters are omitted.  The "k"
>is perfectly clear, so barring a typo in the Commercial, the
>disguised word isn't "shit".
>"stink"? -- but I don't know why that word wouldn't be printable,
>nor, indeed, what a stink pot that might be displayed on a yardarm
>would be.

Or "skunk", _skunk pot_ being either 'a super-strong strain of
marijuana' or 'cheap or poorly grown pot', depending on your sources.
Somewhat unlikely for 1805, I concede.

I suspect it really was "stink pot", which the Ladasha-ellipsis
serving to indicate that "stink" here is really "shit", thereby
forming a kind of double euphemism. Or maybe blending the two
euphemistic devices together inadvertently. (Not that that answers
the yardarm-display puzzle.  But then again I'm only familiar with
yardarms in connection with their relation to solar positioning and
libation schedules.)

LH

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