Meanings
- uncountableA subgenre of speculative fiction, focusing on life at sea during the eras of exploration and piracy.
Don't forget about chain - great for shredding your target's rigging and not half bad as an antipersonnel round too. (Well, if you're in a "SailPunk" setting it's useful, anyway... Arrr, matey; scupper me wi' a handspike if it ain't so.)
1996 April 27, Carl Perkins <carl@gergo.tamu.edu>, “Re: Barriers”, in rec.games.frp.cyber (Usenet), message-ID <f2ab6ed35a112b8d>2 more examples
I notice also that on paper are available nifty and *original* places for live sailpunk RPG'ing but I fear that RN and USN will really frown at the idea of a bunch of live role-players fooling aboard HMS Victory and USS Constitution respectively...
2010 April 25, dott.Piergiorgio <dott.PiergiorgioNIHON@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it>, “Re: Steampunk Martians”, in sci.military.naval (Usenet), message-ID <854ef539444badc6>The specificity of steampunk's Victorian setting, particular in light of the relative presence and notoriety of steampunk vis-à-vis similar subgenres set in other time periods ('clockpunk' or 'sailpunk' set in the Renaissance, such as Paul McAuley's Pasquale's Angel; 'sandalpunk,' set in a technologically innovative ancient world; 'dieselpunk,' 'stonepunk,' etc.) argues for the importance to the present of shifts in technological culture that took place during the Victorian era.
2011, Noam S. Cohen, Speculative Nostalgias: Metafiction, Science Fiction and the Putative Death of the Novel, →ISBN
Origin
Cite this entry
sailpunk. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sailpunk
“sailpunk.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sailpunk. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sailpunk,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sailpunk.
Source: sailpunk on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.