Today, the depth of water can be measured with sound, using sonar. I had assumed that “sounding” referred to a low-tech version of this – making some kind of noise in the water and listening carefully to the echoes, in order to get an indication of where the bottom was. I guess not.
Gavin Pate:
March 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Dan S: There’s a phrase ‘swinging the lead’ (as in metal). It means to skive, or ignore a task at hand and refers to sailors shirking the task of sounding the ocean floor with lead weights on rope. Primitive sonar indeed.
As for sound itself I come from a place where it has colloquial meaning. Sound is chirped by many a Mancunian (Manchester, UK) to mean someone of good character, by way of reassurance, or generally being a bit chuffed with what’s going down.
And a more gentile expression in the UK is to be ‘sound as a pound (stirling) which I suppose now harks back to the sounding of currency cited in this article.
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Elizabeth Lightwood:
November 25th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
The Times is out of joint, perhaps?
Dan S.:
June 15th, 2011 at 11:29 am
Today, the depth of water can be measured with sound, using sonar. I had assumed that “sounding” referred to a low-tech version of this – making some kind of noise in the water and listening carefully to the echoes, in order to get an indication of where the bottom was. I guess not.
Gavin Pate:
March 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Dan S: There’s a phrase ‘swinging the lead’ (as in metal). It means to skive, or ignore a task at hand and refers to sailors shirking the task of sounding the ocean floor with lead weights on rope. Primitive sonar indeed.
As for sound itself I come from a place where it has colloquial meaning. Sound is chirped by many a Mancunian (Manchester, UK) to mean someone of good character, by way of reassurance, or generally being a bit chuffed with what’s going down.
And a more gentile expression in the UK is to be ‘sound as a pound (stirling) which I suppose now harks back to the sounding of currency cited in this article.