Did Pirates Really Say "Arrrr"?The origin of Hollywood's high-seas slang.
Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2007, at 1:02 PM ET
Johnny Depp took home the best performance award at Sunday's MTV Movie Awards, for his role as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (The third installment of the series topped the weekend box-office tallies again this past weekend, pulling in $43.2 million.) Depp's character famously speaks in a dissolute London mumble inspired by Keith Richards. But virtually all his crewmen hew to the classic movie-pirate patois, full of growled consonants and shiver-me-timbers slang. Wait, did pirates really say "arrrrr"?
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StumbleUponProbably not. Both that phrase and the accent that goes with it are strictly Hollywood. The pirate phrase "Arrrgh" appeared in film as early as 1934; a character also uses the phrase in a 1940 novel by Jeffrey Farnol. But the phrase and accent were popularized by Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in the movies and on TV through much of the 1950s. Newton was from Dorset, in southwest England,* and the regional accent he brought to the movies included a rolled "r." Though Dorset may well have produced its share of sailors, they were hardly the only pirates out there; many seamen*—and especially the outlaws on pirate vessels—were people who struck out from oppressed nations, like Scotland and Ireland, to start over on the high seas.
So, was there a typical pirate accent at all? Among British outlaws, yes: The onboard speech was most likely underclass British sailor with extra curse words, augmented with a polyglot slang of French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch picked up around the trade routes. "Arrrrr" is mostly fiction, as are a number of the other affiliated signifiers: People very rarely walked the plank*, and nobody has ever discovered an actual pirate treasure map. On the myth-confirming side, pirates were known to dress in loose clothing, guzzle rum and smash the empty bottles, and chase busty wenches through Caribbean ports.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Christine Lampe, editor of the pirate-history journal No Quarter Given, and Richard Zacks, author of Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd.
Correction, June 7, 2007: The original version incorrectly said that the pirate's "arrr" originated with Robert Newton. Lionel Barrymore used "arrrgh" in a film from 1934. It also said that Dorset is in the Cotswolds district of southwest England. The Cotswolds are in central England. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Correction, June 7, 2007: The original asserted that "most" seamen came from oppressed nations like Scotland and Ireland. Many did, but more came from southwest England than anywhere else. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Correction, June 7, 2007: The original version asserted that "arrr" is "strictly fiction," and that no one ever walked the plank. West country pirates may well have used the phrase "arrrgh", and there does exist at least one recorded instance of plank-walking. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
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Remarks from the Fray Editor:
If Explainer's your cup of tea (or rum), take a long look at this thread, started by GLM. From curse words to keel hauls and barnacles to Bristol, it's a mini-encyclopedia of pirate-related trivia. –G.A.
Remarks from the Fray:
A lot of seafaring Brits came from the west of England. One of the main ports there is Bristol, where I lived for several years. I was waiting in the usual rain one day for a bus, and the man behind me peered down the road and asked,"Is that a number 43?" The bowlegged, weathered little guy behind him also peered through the rain and answered, "Arrr, that be ee." I heard "Oh, arrr" all the time. It's just West Country dialect, and a lot of sailors, pirates or not, would have talked that way.
--GLM
(To reply, click here.)
Any Pirate worth his bones begins everything he says with a hearty "Aarrrgh", unless he says "Aaargh Matey"!
Perhaps my most unworthy moment as a manager involved a young pirate and this phrase. Once upon a time, I hired a junior chemist. I wasn't all that impressed with the guy, but we were very shorthanded in the lab and he had a degree, resume and all of the proper courses, so I gave him a shot.
The first day, I knew I had made a mistake, but I figured I'd give the guy a shot, since I had 90 days to give him the boot for failure to perform. Actually I could let him go without cause, but I'm not that bad hearted.
And then a few days later, he came in with a HUGE Gold loop - as in three inches across in one ear.
What was I to do? I called him in for a lab manager/analyst conference and told him that the ear ring placed him under the corporate "pirate rule" and that he would now be required to begin each statement with the words "Aarrrgh Matey".
He failed to see the humor. The next day, I was called into the HR Manager's office to explain my lack of personnel management and HR skills. I patiently explained what had happened, and after the HR manager managed to calm down his laughter, we discussed how I would apologize to the new chemist. And then we called him in and I did. A few weeks later, we caught him dry-labing a test and let him go.
Moral?
Aarrrgh Matey, even Pirates are prohibited from dry-labing.
--meridiantoo
(To reply, click here.)
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