{"id":58,"date":"2006-05-12T14:07:43","date_gmt":"2006-05-12T13:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/12\/shellbacks-and-polliwogs\/"},"modified":"2006-05-12T14:07:43","modified_gmt":"2006-05-12T13:07:43","slug":"shellbacks-and-polliwogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Shellbacks and polliwogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My brother and his girlfriend are currently polliwogs, but sometime today or tomorrow they will become shellbacks. A polliwog or pollywog is a sailor who has not crossed the equator, while a shellback is one who has, or an experienced or old sailor.<\/p>\n<p>According to nautical tradition, when the equator is crossed, a ceremony is performed for King Neptune and shellbacks ridicule and humiliate polliwogs.<\/p>\n<p>Polliwog comes from the Middle English <em>polwygle<\/em>. <em>Pol<\/em> comes from Middle Low German <em>polle<\/em>, hair of the head, head, top of a tree, and <em>wygle<\/em> from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch <em>wiggeln<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s some details of the equator crossing ceremonies in the US navy at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desausa.org\/pollywog_to_shellback.htm\">http:\/\/www.desausa.org\/pollywog_to_shellback.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And you can follow my brother&#8217;s adventures at:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kikasailing.blogspot.com\/\">http:\/\/kikasailing.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My brother and his girlfriend are currently polliwogs, but sometime today or tomorrow they will become shellbacks. A polliwog or pollywog is a sailor who has not crossed the equator, while a shellback is one who has, or an experienced or old sailor. According to nautical tradition, when the equator is crossed, a ceremony is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}