larboard

plural larboards

1. archaicuncountableusuallynauticalThe left side of a ship, looking from the stern forward to the bow; port side.

   "It means to turn to larboard."

   2001, Dudley Pope, Ramage & the Rebels

   5 more examples

   After the Reuenge vvas intangled vvith this Philip [i.e., San Felipe], foure other boorded her; tvvo on her larboord, and tvvo on her ſtarboord.

   1591, [Walter Raleigh], A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of Açores, this Last Sommer. Betwixt the Reuenge, One of her Maiesties Shippes, and an Armada of the King of Spaine, London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, signature B2, recto

   […] harder beset / And more endangered than when Argo passed / Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks, / Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned / Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered.

   1667, John Milton, “(please specify the page number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC

   The boat made a sharp half-turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt.

   1841, Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelström

   We have had enough of action, and of motion we, / Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, / Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

   1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, stanza 8, page 183

   Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube, and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side, and glanced off in an inky jet, that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of black smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear.

   1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter XVII, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, (please specify the page number(s))

   Synonyms: backboard, leeboard, left, port · Antonyms: right, starboard