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Portolan

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:08 pm
by William Hupy
Try this, directly from Italian, or so I am led to believe: portolan. Relating to ports.

Re: Portolan

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:47 pm
by Slava
Try this, directly from Italian, or so I am led to believe: portolan. Relating to ports.
Dictionary.com doesn't like this one, preferring portolano, but a few others do. It isn't quite an adjective, though. I'll let Wikipedia demonstrate so I don't have to do all the writing myself. :)

Portolano becomes Rutter:
A rutter is a mariner's handbook of written sailing directions. Before the advent of nautical charts, rutters were the primary store of geographic information for maritime navigation.

It was known as a periplus ("sailing-around" book) in Classical antiquity and a portolano ("port book") to Medieval Italian sailors in the Mediterranean Sea. Portuguese navigators of the 16th century called it a roteiro, the French a routier, from which the English word "rutter" is derived. In Dutch, it was called a leeskarte ("reading chart") and in German a Seebuch ("sea book").
No mention as to why it became rutter and not what I consider the more sensible router.

Portolan is essentially a map:
Portolan or portulan charts are navigational maps based on compass directions and estimated distances observed by the pilots at sea.

Re: Portolan

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:56 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Wow! A whole plethora of words I never knew existed!