Anchor

There are two words (together with derivatives for each) written thus: anchor. Although the two meanings are distinct, they have influenced each other in various shades of meaning, notably the figurative. The first (and older) is currently far more common.

• The commoner noun by far in current English is anchor and its related verb 'to anchor', as the name of the weighty object designed with appropriate holding devices, commonly hooked or semi-hooked, by which, through a fastening called the anchor cable or if of metal the anchor chain, a ship or boat may be held fast to the solid ground of the sea-bed below. 'Dropping the anchor', or 'anchoring' denotes coming to a stop; 'raising' or 'weighing' the anchor is the start of a voyage. Three types of anchor may be distinguished:
  • The sheet anchor was normally the biggest on board, and used only in extreme emergency. It has been used figuratively as "That on which one places one's reliance when everything else has failed" (OED 1914), s.v. sheet anchor meaning 1 b..
  • The bower (rhymes with 'power', IPA: /ˈbaʊ ə^r/) anchor was one of two carried in larger vessels at the bows - the best bower and the small-bower.
  • A kedge anchor is a smaller anchor used especially in towing a vessel by giving it a secure hold on which the crew might haul to change the vessel's orientation or position in an operation known as kedging or warping.
    • The lodgement of an anchor - its secure grip on the ground - is called an anchor-hold or anchorage.

Etymological note: this anchor (formerly spelled ancre, ankyr, ankre etc.) is derived from the Latin ancora, related to the Greek ἄνκūρα, from a root meaning 'bend', 'crook', 'hook' from which English also derives 'angle'. It is curious that the sport of angling may be carried out from a boat that is at anchor. (Note that the Latin cited above has no '-h-': OED says that it was "sometimes erron[eously] spelt anchora", adding "The current spelling anchor is a pedantic corruption, imitating the erroneous Latin anchora." It may have been influenced by the '-h-' in the next word, which is part of the transliteration of the Greek letter χ, 'chi'.

• The currently less common anchor is the earliest form of what is more commonly called an 'anchorite', an epicene noun, although there is a feminine form 'anchoress', and an obsolete and rare 'anchoritess'. All denote someone who opted for an intensely solitary religious life, in its classic form by being walled up alone in a cell constructed within a church, sometimes within a wall of a church; the 'anchorite' could see the altar through a squint or opening (sometimes called a hagioscope) in the walls of the cell. (Sometimes the anchorite's immurement was accompanied by a funeral service to mark the holy one's 'death to life'.) The cell was known as an anchor-hold or anchorage.
• One of the most highly regarded prose works of the Middle English period is Ancrene Wisse (~ 'the usage [or habits] of Anchoresses', ancrene being an archaic possessive plural). The text, probably written originally in the 1320s, is also known as Ancrene Riwle, (for Rule), and may be best thought of as a 'Guide to Anchoresses'. It lays down how they are to behave.

Etymological note: this 'anchor' (formerly spelled ancra, ancre, ankre, anker, aunker etc.) is derived from Latin anachōrīta, transliterating Greek ἀναχωρητής, 'a person who performs the action of ἀναχωρεῖν 'to retire or withdraw [from the world]'. Since about 1600, the preferred form has been anchorite. The forn anachoret is rare, and when used is applied to "the recluses of the East in the early Christian centuries" -OED, 1933).