Shiver me timbers – An Explanation
Everyone knows that pirates are awesome. The popularity of the recent Pirates of Caribbean movies staring Johnny Depp prove that fact. However, there is a juicy piece of pirate speech that everyone has said at one point in time, “Shiver me timbers.” It is usually said in shock and most people know the right situations to use it. However, the meaning of it is not always known or easily searchable.
There is one sight that I came across through an article on AllExperts.com. The article pointed to The Pirates Realm. They have little section title “Pirate Talk” which describes the phrase as follows:
akin to "Blow me down!", an expression of shock or disbelief, believed to come from the sound the ship made when 'shocked' by running aground or hit by a cannon blast.
This definition is popularly believed mostly because of the word “shiver” being literally defined as our verb “to shiver.”. You can see examples of this on Urban Dictionary and other sites. However, during the days of Pirates a shive/shiver, as in the noun, was a piece or splinter of wood. To shiver, meant to splinter a piece of wood into smaller pieces. Thus “shiver me timbers” mean to split a mast into splinters. Since pirate ships were all wind powered, when a mast (or timber) was shivered (or destroyed), the pirates were as good as dead. They were left on the seas without any way to move the ship or call for help.
