berth

CEFRC2

/bɜːθ/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    a job in an organization.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    Chiefly in wide berth: a sufficient space in the water for a ship or other vessel to lie at anchor or manoeuvre without getting in the way of other vessels, or colliding into rocks or the shore.

Examples

  • I'd like to reserve a sleeping berth.

  • The sailor retired to his berth early.

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5

Also pronounced

  • /beːθ/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A place for a vessel to lie at anchor or to moor.

  2. A room in a vessel in which the officers or company mess (“eat together”) and reside; also, a room or other place in a vessel for storage.

  3. A place on a vessel to sleep, especially a bed on the side of a cabin.

More examples

In context

  • Whenever she sees me, she gives me a wide berth.

  • Tho' vve vvere again got near our harbour by three in the afternoon, yet it ſeemed to require a full hour or more, before vve could come to our former place of anchoring, or birth, as the captain called it.

  • "[…] She lays close to the Endymion, between her and the Cleopatra, just to the eastward of the sheer hulk." / "Ha!" cried William, "that's just where I should have put her myself. It's the best birth at Spithead.[…]"

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The large ship was assigned a wide blank at the busy harbor dock.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

The noun is derived from Late Middle English birth (“(nautical) bearing away or off, clearance, berth”). Further etymology uncertain, but probably from beren (“to carry (away), bear”) + -th (suffix denoting a condition, quality, state of being, etc., forming nouns); if so, the English word is analysable as bear + -th (suffix forming nouns from verbs), and is a piecewise doublet of birth. The verb is derived from the noun.