Port out, starboard home

What Hacker News says

1. opaqueAug 2019
   "Port Out, Starboard Home" by Michael Quinion is a nice book about 'folk etymologies' that covers these and many more. He gives the real origin where it's known.
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2. 082349872349872Oct 2020
   One of those lemmata casts doubt on the veracity of "Port Out, Starboard Home." I also enjoyed the dual meanings of pot-walloper, similar to "cutting coupons" shifting semantics at opposite ends of the NRS social grades.
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3. fenomasAug 2019
   Evan Morris, author of "The Word Detective" column that used to run in papers and alt weeklies, used to perennially comment that acronyms in English were quite rare until roughly WW1-WW2, and as such etymologies involving them ("to insure promptness", "port out starboard home", etc.) are virtually always false.

   More to the point, TFA lays out various evidence why this particular theory is unlikely.

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