Talk Like a Pirate Day, Sept 19th!

Avast ye, brigands. If ye be not a wastrel, scurry to yon Davy Jones' Locker and embark on a journey within a book! Aarrr!*

I'm a pirate! That I be!
I sail me ship upon the sea!
I stay up late - till half past three!
And that's a peg below me knee!


Talk Like a Pirate Day is a yearly day to talk like a pirate. "Why?" you may ask. 

“Because it's fun!” Fun breeds creativity, creativity breeds curiosity and curiosity is the mother of learning. Dressing like a pirate is optional. 

 Develop a pirate vocabulary:
• Aarrr!: Pirate exclamation. Done with a growl and used to emphasize the pirate's current
feelings.
• Ahoy: Hello
• Avast: Stop and pay attention
• Beauty: a lovely woman,
• Belaying Pin: a small wooden pin used to hold rigging in place. Sometimes used as a
bludgeoning weapon.
• Cutlass: Popular sword among pirates
• Davy Jones' Locker: The bottom of the sea. The final resting place for many pirates and
their ships. As far as anyone knows, there was no real person named Davy Jones. It’s
just the sprit of the ocean, firmly a part of pirate mythology since at least the middle of
the 18th century.
• Disembark: To leave the ship
• Embark: To enter the ship in order to go on a journey
• Foul: Turned bad or done badly, as in ‘Foul Weather’ or ‘Foul Dealings’
• Grog: A drink that pirates enjoyed
• Hornpipe: a single reed instrument, also a dance.
• Keelhaul: Punishment. Usually tying the sailor to a rope and dragging him under the ship
from stem to stern.
• Lubber: Land lover. Someone who doesn't want to go to sea.
• Matey: Friend or comrade
• Ne’er-do-well: A scoundrel or rascal
• Pieces of eight: Spanish silver coins that could actually be broken into eight pieces, or bits.
Two of these bits were a quarter of the coin, and that’s where we get the expression
“two bits” for a quarter of a dollar, as in the cheer, “Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar
…” (Do we feel a math lesson coming on?)
• Plunder: Treasure taken from others
• Rigging: Ropes that hold the sails in place
• Saucy Wench: A wild woman
• Tankard: A large mug, for ale
• Wastrel: A useless man
• Weigh anchor: Prepare to leave
• Yardarm: Extended from the mast and used to hang criminals or mutineers or, more
prosaically, to hoist cargo on board ship




(*Translation:  Attention, don't be a loser, come down to the library and check out a book! Yay!)