slatch
Pluralslatches
- 1A short interval of fine, settled weather occurring between periods of storm or rough conditions.
The captain seized the slatch to dry the sails and air the lower decks.
A welcome slatch let the fishermen mend their nets on the open beach.
Note
Where the passing-breeze meaning is about air on the move, this one is about the break itself: a stretch of fair weather. The two are easy to blur in older prose, so let the context decide. Talk of wind points to the first, and talk of fine conditions points here. Like its neighbor, it has no place in present-day writing.
- 2The brief period of a passing breeze, or a temporary shift in the wind.
The helmsman used each slatch to edge the ship a little closer to harbor.
A slatch from the east carried the smell of rain across the deck.
Note
A word that has fallen out of use, and one whose history points back to slack. It names the short life of a passing breeze, or the moment the wind changes, and it belongs to the reading of older texts rather than to new writing. Where current English needs the idea, a passing breeze or a wind shift says it plainly. Its plural is slatches.
- 3The slack or loose portion of a rope, the part not drawn tight.
The sailor took up the slatch and made the line fast to the cleat.
There was too much slatch in the rope, and the load swung dangerously.
Note
Rope talk aboard ship, and the sense that sits closest to slack itself. It means the loose part of a line as opposed to the part drawn tight. Since it is obsolete, it turns up mainly in older nautical writing. In a modern account the ordinary word is simply slack, which carries the same meaning without the period flavor.
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