Give a Wide Berth Was Advice About Anchoring
A berth is a bed on a ship or a place to moor. The phrase give a wide berth meant leaving sea room, long before it meant avoiding a person.
A berth is a sleeping place on a ship or train, or a place where a vessel ties up. *Give a wide berth* is seventeenth-century seamanship: it meant anchoring far enough from another ship that the two would not swing into each other when the tide turned. The advice about avoiding awkward people came later. The word is probably related to *bear*, in the sense of bearing away.
- A bed on a ship or train. *An upper berth.*
- A mooring place. *The ship left its berth.*
- A position or place. *A berth in the final.*
- Give a wide berth — keep well clear of. *Give him a wide berth.*
- Birth — the homophone, and unrelated. *A difficult birth.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | berth | A quiet berth. |
| Plural | berths | Four berths. |
| Verb | berth | The ship berthed. |
| Adjective | berthed | Safely berthed. |
| Homophone | birth | The birth rate. |
- The ferry has two hundred berths.Sleeping places.
- The tanker berthed at dawn.Mooring.
- Give that argument a wide berth.The idiom.
Berth or birth?
- Berth — a bed, a mooring or a place
- Birth — being born
- Give a wide berth — always the sea word
- Birth rate, birthday, birthplace — always the other
- No shared origin — the pair is a coincidence of sound
First recorded in the 1620s as sea room, probably from *bear* plus the noun ending -th. The bed sense dates from the 1700s.
Where does give a wide berth come from?
From anchoring practice. Ships needed room to swing with the tide without colliding, so they kept a wide berth from one another.
Is berth related to birth?
No. They sound identical but come from different roots.