sealubber

plural sealubbers

1. uncommonSomeone familiar with the sea or seamanship; an experienced sailor.

   The punster is a low person, who refers to the awkwardness of the seal’s gait by speaking of his not having his seal-legs, although a mariner—or a sealubber, as he might express it.

   1893 February, Arthur Morrison, “Zig-Zags at the Zoo: VIII. Zig-Zag Phocine”, in George Newnes, editor, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume V, number 26, London: George Newnes, Ltd., […], →OCLC, page 130

   4 more examples

   I can command a ship. Perhaps I ought to be content with that. But I’d like to know a few of the things that Winthrop there knows so well. We make fun of a landlubber at sea, but he’s nothing to a sealubber ashore.

   1904, Henry Kitchell Webster, chapter VII, in Traitor and Loyalist; or, The Man Who Found His Country, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 111

   Showing unusual ability for sealubbers when they swept the boards in both hurdle events, thereby reaping a harvest of 22 points, the Columbia Midshipmen School captured the team honors in the annual Metropolitan A.A.U. senior indoor championships, the season's opening track and field event, at the Twenty-second Regiment Armory last night.

   1945 January 21, William D. Richardson, “Columbia Middies Win A.A.U. Crown; N.Y.A.C. Is Next; Winners of Two Events in Yesterday’s A.A.U. Championship Meet”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Jul 2025

   Now and then the old ship rocks a bit in the bow wash of a steamer outward bound for Finland and farther points; she strains at her moorings, as though eager for one last voyage. Nostalgic landlubbers, and sealubbers, enamored of the bygone days of sail, find her quite irresistible.

   1960 May 8, David MacNeil Doren, “Hosteler’s Anchorage in Stockholm”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Jul 2025

   THE WINDS CALL: Cruises Near and Far (Scribner’s, $8.95), and for over twenty years the winds have been calling Carleton Mitchell, and this is his grateful response—a collection of salty (or at any rate saline) autobiographical essays covering the peripatetic cruises of a man who lives on a boat and is an uncompromising sealubber.

   1971 December 19, B. J. Kahn Jr., “Twenty‐Four Titles for the World Traveler’s Book Bag”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 Feb 2018