man-of-war
noun

- the common name of Physalia physalis, a colonial marine hydrozoan named for its resemblance to a 15th-century Portuguese warship at full sail.

- a fighting ship of a nation's navy; a warship.


- a combatant warship of a national navy; also, a Portuguese man-of-war.


- a large sailing ship used in the past for fighting wars.

Britannica, Oxford English Dictionary,  Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The trail runs backwards through a dropped word. In late-14th-century English, a man of war was a person — a soldier, a fighting man. A vessel crammed with such men was, sensibly, a man-of-war ship. 

Over time the "ship" fell away as redundant, and the phrase that survived — a man-of-war — became the vessel itself, in defiance of the English habit of calling ships she. (The 19th-century antiquarian Henry Reddall recorded exactly this contraction in 1892.)

The sea creature borrows the name at a second remove: first attested in this sense around 1707, it was christened by sailors who saw, in its translucent float riding above the waves, a Portuguese warship under full sail.

So the jellyfish-that-isn't-a-jellyfish is named after a ship, which was named after the soldiers who once crewed it.

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THE ONE THAT IS MANY

The Portuguese man-o'-war is not a single animal,... it is a society of animals

Biologists call it a siphonophore, and the plain facts are very strange indeed.

What looks like a single creature — a gas-filled sail trailing venomous threads — is in truth a colony of specialised bodies called zooids. One zooid is the float. Others do nothing but sting; others nothing but digest; others nothing but reproduce.

Every zooid is genetically identical, grown from a single fertilised egg, and not one of them can survive alone. The stinging zooid cannot eat. The digesting zooid cannot catch. They are less like organs than like colleagues who have divided the labour so completely that none remembers how to do another's job.

The man-o’-war survives because none of its members tries—or is able—to do everything.

Seems there’s a lesson there.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

blue bottle (jellyfish), blue-bubble, Caravela, floating terror, MAN-OF-WAR, Pacific man-o'-war, Physalia (utriculus), Portuguesa, Portuguese man-of-war, Physalia, Siphonophore 



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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Despite its sting, the MAN-OF-WAR jellyfish is an object lesson of teamwork.”

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THANKS to Kurt for suggesting today’s OWAD.

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