he's-at-home

plural he's-at-homes

1. euphemisticNantucketlifestyleA dildo gifted by a whaleman to his wife for use while he is at sea, sometimes made of scrimshaw.

   An island tradition claims that Nantucket women dealt with their husbands' long absences by relying on sexual aids known as "he's-at-homes."

   2000, Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, →ISBN, page 17

   1 more example

   In Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab tells his first mate, Starbuck, that of the past forty years of “making war on the horrors of the deep” he’d only been ashore three, leaving only “one dent in [his] marriage pillow.” “[W]ife?” Ahab rages, “wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive!” The dildos, called “he’s-at-homes” in some books on the history of the Yankee whale fishery, were meant to be some insurance of fidelity for a husband who was rarely present.

   2015 October 22, Ben Shattuck, “He’s-At-Home”, in The Common, number 10, Amherst College