Note 81 — Chapter VIII

It would be interesting to trace the rise and spread of nautical metaphor in English. We have a good example of the transition from the bucolic to the nautical in the expression "To lose the ship for a ha'porth of tar." Few people who use this metaphor know that ship is here the dialect pronunciation of sheep; cf. Ship Street, at Oxford (and elsewhere), for Sheep Street. Tar was, and is, used as a medicine for sheep, but in this particular case the allusion seems to be rather to the marking of sheep with tar; cf. "tarred with the same brush," i.e., members of the same flock.