Wednesday 13 March 2019

Allide

Allide isn't a word you hear much. I don't think I'd have come across it myself if I didn't happen to be married to a handsome and extremely talented maritime photographer (that's me in Brownie points for a while!)

You know what collide means, I expect. Well, allide is like that, but only one of the objects is moving. Just as you can witness a collision when two moving objects strike each other, an allision is the action of a moving object hitting a stationary object.

Allision seems to be used almost exclusively in connection with ships. Sometimes one allides against another, more commonly a pier or mooring pontoon is involved.

This is Norwegian Epic. She recently allided with a pier in Puerto Rico. (And you thought I was making this up, didn't you?)

6 comments:

liz young said...

The things you learn! That ship doesn't appeal to me at all, excellent though the photo is - ships should be ship-shape, not a block of flats on a barge.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I suppose a car wrapping itself around a telephone pole would be considered alliding.

LINDSAY said...

New word in my vocabulary.

Patsy said...

@ Liz – I'm sure she's all ship-shape inside!

@ Alex – yes, and a jolly bad plan.

@ Unknown – jolly good!

Jacqui Murray--Writer-Teacher said...

This is the coolest things I'm likely to learn all day. I'm going to be throwing that word around on the blogosphere!

Patsy said...

Jolly good, Jacqui!