Schooner Schoon"er noun [ See the Note below. Confer
Shun .]
(Nautical) Originally, a small, sharp-built vessel, with two masts and fore-and-aft rig. Sometimes it carried square topsails on one or both masts and was called a topsail schooner . About 1840, longer vessels with three masts, fore-and- aft rigged, came into use, and since that time vessels with four masts and even with six masts, so rigged, are built. Schooners with more than two masts are designated three-masted schooners , four- masted schooners , etc. See Illustration in Appendix. » The first
schooner ever constructed is said to have been built in Gloucester, Massachusetts, about the year 1713, by a Captain Andrew Robinson, and to have received its name from the following trivial circumstance: When the vessel went off the stocks into the water, a bystander cried out,"O, how she
scoons !" Robinson replied, " A
scooner let her be;" and, from that time, vessels thus masted and rigged have gone by this name. The word
scoon is popularly used in some parts of New England to denote the act of making stones skip along the surface of water. The Scottish
scon means the same thing. Both words are probably allied to the Icelandic
skunda ,
skynda , to make haste, hurry, Anglo-Saxon
scunian to avoid, shun, Prov. English
scun . In the New England records, the word appears to have been originally written
scooner . Babson, in his "History of Gloucester," gives the following extract from a letter written in that place Sept. 25, 1721, by Dr. Moses Prince, brother of the Rev. Thomas Prince, the annalist of New England: "This gentleman (Captain Robinson) was first contriver of
schooners , and built the first of that sort about eight years since."
Science Sci"ence noun [ French, from Latin
scientia , from
sciens ,
-entis , present participle of
scire to know. Confer
Conscience ,
Conscious ,
Nice .]
1. Knowledge; knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained truth of facts. If we conceive God's sight or science , before the creation, to be extended to all and every part of the world, seeing everything as it is, . . . his science or sight from all eternity lays no necessity on anything to come to pass.
Hammond. Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy.
Coleridge. 2. Accumulated and established knowledge, which has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work, life, or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound, or philosophical knowledge. All this new science that men lere [ teach].
Chaucer. Science is . . . a complement of cognitions, having, in point of form, the character of logical perfection, and in point of matter, the character of real truth.
Sir W. Hamilton. 3. Especially, such knowledge when it relates to the physical world and its phenomena, the nature, constitution, and forces of matter, the qualities and functions of living tissues, etc.; -- called also natural science , and physical science . Voltaire hardly left a single corner of the field entirely unexplored in science , poetry, history, philosophy.
J. Morley. 4. Any branch or department of systematized knowledge considered as a distinct field of investigation or object of study; as, the science of astronomy, of chemistry, or of mind. » The ancients reckoned seven sciences, namely, grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; -- the first three being included in the
Trivium , the remaining four in the
Quadrivium .
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science , fairly worth the seven.
Pope. 5. Art, skill, or expertness, regarded as the result of knowledge of laws and principles. His science , coolness, and great strength.
G. A. Lawrence. »
Science is
applied or
pure .
Applied science is a knowledge of facts, events, or phenomena, as explained, accounted for, or produced, by means of powers, causes, or laws.
Pure science is the knowledge of these powers, causes, or laws, considered
apart , or as pure from all applications. Both these terms have a similar and special signification when applied to the science of quantity; as, the
applied and
pure mathematics .
Exact science is knowledge so systematized that prediction and verification, by measurement, experiment, observation, etc., are possible. The mathematical and physical sciences are called
the exact sciences .
Comparative sciences ,
Inductive sciences .
See under Comparative , and Inductive . Syn. -- Literature; art; knowledge. --
Science ,
Literature ,
Art .
Science is literally
knowledge , but more usually denotes a systematic and orderly arrangement of knowledge. In a more distinctive sense,
science embraces those branches of knowledge of which the subject-matter is either ultimate principles, or facts as explained by principles or laws thus arranged in natural order. The term
literature sometimes denotes all compositions not embraced under
science , but usually confined to the
belles-lettres . [ See
Literature .]
Art is that which depends on practice and skill in performance. "In
science ,
scimus ut sciamus ; in art,
scimus ut producamus . And, therefore,
science and
art may be said to be investigations of truth; but one,
science , inquires for the sake of knowledge; the other,
art , for the sake of production; and hence
science is more concerned with the higher truths,
art with the lower; and
science never is engaged, as
art is, in productive application. And the most perfect state of
science , therefore, will be the most high and accurate inquiry; the perfection of
art will be the most apt and efficient system of rules; art always throwing itself into the form of rules."
Karslake.
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