Davy Jones's Locker Is the Bottom of the Sea
A locker is a lockable compartment. Sailors gave the word its most famous phrase, meaning a watery grave.
A locker is a small lockable compartment. The sea supplied the memorable phrase: *Davy Jones's locker* means the bottom of the ocean, where drowned sailors and sunken ships end up. Davy Jones was a sailors' name for an evil spirit of the deep, recorded from the eighteenth century, and his identity has never been settled.
- A lockable compartment. *A gym locker.*
- A storage chest. *A ship's locker.*
- Davy Jones's locker — the sea bottom. *Gone to Davy Jones's locker.*
- Locker room — a changing room. *Locker room talk.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | locker | A steel locker. |
| Plural | lockers | Rows of lockers. |
| Verb | lock | Lock the door. |
| Compound | locker room | The locker room. |
| Related | lock | A padlock. |
How it is used in a sentence
- He went to Davy Jones's locker.Drowned at sea.
- Leave your bag in the locker.Storage.
- A chain locker holds the anchor cable.Shipboard.
Nautical phrases
- Davy Jones's locker — the ocean floor
- Shot locker — where cannonballs were kept
- Chain locker — where the anchor cable is stowed
- Scuttlebutt — a water cask, and hence gossip
- Cut and run — to cut the anchor cable and sail immediately
From *lock*, Old English *loc*, a fastening. Davy Jones appears in print from the 1720s, with no agreed origin.
Who was Davy Jones?
A sailors' name for an evil spirit of the sea. Several explanations have been proposed, none of them established.
Why is gossip called scuttlebutt?
From the ship's water cask, where sailors gathered to drink and talk, exactly as offices later gathered round a water cooler.