turtled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of turtle.

   The dinghy turtled when a wave caught it broadside.

   Several rafts had turtled by the time the rescue team arrived.

   Note

   A regular past form: turtle simply adds -d, and one spelling covers both "the canoe turtled" and "the canoe had turtled." Most of the verb's meanings are intransitive: flipping over, swimming upside down, hunting turtles, creeping along. So the participle usually pairs with have rather than forming a passive. A raft has turtled; it is rarely said to have been turtled. Placed before a noun, the same spelling becomes the capsized-boat adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of a vessel, capsized so that it floats keel-up, with the hull facing the surface.

   Like a turtle flipped onto its shell, lying with its underside exposed.

   The turtled hull bobbed in the swell while the crew clung to its sides.

   Salvage divers inspected the turtled trawler resting upside down below the surface.

   Similarupturned, inverted

   Oppositeupright

   Note

   Sailors single out this state because it is so hard to undo. Derrick Fries's Start Sailing Right! (1988) explains why: an upside-down hull is very stable, and sails hanging below the water resist every effort to right it. The adjective takes no degrees, so a boat is turtled or it is not, never "more turtled." It sits naturally before a noun, as in a turtled dinghy or a turtled hull.

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