s---k pot, 1805 (?)

[Garson O'Toole]

Here is a work in 1900, "A Close Shave, or How Major Flagg Won his
Bet" that describes a stink pot. Perhaps this matches s----k.

"One of their principal weapons, especially when attacking foreign
ships, is the stink-pot, which may be more elegantly termed 'the
asphyxiating vase.' It is an earthen pot, filled with the most
villainous-smelling compounds that can be produced in the world; when
thrown on the deck of a ship the pot breaks and the evil-smelling
contents are scattered all around.

http://books.google.com/books?id=7OYPAAAAYAAJ&q=%22stink+pot%22#v=snippet&

(While I was preparing this message Larry posted this possible interpretation.)

Garson


On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: s---k pot, 1805 (?)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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