steerage

English

Etymology

From steer +‎ -age.

Noun

steerage (countable and uncountable, plural steerages)

  1. (uncountable) The art of steering.
  2. (countable) The section of a passenger ship that provided inexpensive accommodation with no individual cabins.
    • 1896, Henry Lawson, For`ard:
      It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
      For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep
    • 1904, Jack London, chapter 32, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:
      Hope was alive again in my breast, and I looked about me with greater coolness. I noted that the boats were missing. The steerage told the same tale as the forecastle. The hunters had packed their belongings with similar haste. The Ghost was deserted. It was Maud's and mine. I thought of the ship's stores and the lazarette beneath the cabin, and the idea came to me of surprising Maud with something nice for breakfast.
    • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 1, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎[1]:
      “I have visited my quarters, and find them very comfortable. […] Steerage is like everything else maritime […] vastly improved since Robert Louis Stevenson took his trip third class to New York.”
  3. (countable) The effect of the helm on a ship.

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.