Anchors

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A heavy object that holds ships in place is essential for navigation
2. Heavy devices used to secure boats in position by gripping the seabed ; individuals or elements that offer steadiness or reliability in a situation
3. Weights designed to fasten watercraft firmly to the bottom, preventing drift ; sources of security or reassurance in uncertain circumstances

Etymology: "Anchors" is the plural of "anchor," a noun for the heavy hooked device that grips the seabed to hold a vessel in place. Its ancestry runs back to Ancient Greek "ankura," a word for the hooked iron that held a ship fast, which the Romans took over as "ancora." Old English borrowed the Latin form as "ancor" and "ancra," and Middle English turned it into "anker." The modern spelling "anchor" is a sixteenth-century change, made to match the Medieval Latin spelling "anchora," so the letter h was added to a word that never had one in English. The word has a surprising cousin. Old English "ancer" and "ancra," the same borrowing from Latin, came to mean a religious hermit who lived sealed in a small cell, a sense that developed from the Greek "anachoretes," meaning one who withdraws. The two meanings share a root only in the sense that both words came into English from the same Latin source, and the hermit's cell and the ship's hook were never linked in the way the spellings might suggest.

Synonyms: moorings, fastenings, weights, holdfasts, stabilizers

Antonyms: drifts, floats, loosens, unfastens