bilge

If you have ever sat at a restaurant, marveling at the bilge offered on the kids’ menu and wondering how on earth we got here, “Picky” has the answers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026

“Officers and surgeons roamed the decks, sniffing out potential culprits: foul bilge, moldy sails, rancid meat, human sweat, rotten timber, dead rats, piss and excrement, unwashed livestock, dirty breath,” Grann writes.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 18, 2023

Fadich worked the bilge pumps till he was “blue in the face” just to keep the vessel above water.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 2, 2023

It is oppressively dull work, but at least it isn’t the bilge.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022

The rabbits had been frightened by what had happened to Acorn and to the doe, and remained squatting miserably, half in and half out of the bilge.

From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams

She urged measures such as requiring fishers and riverboat operators to bleach boat hulls, bilges, and wells after passing through an affected area.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 20, 2021

We mapped the bilges out in the fall, came back and looked at them in spring, and there was nothing there.

From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2017

But it actually is a Spanish expression, “of where the sea goes”; while the Spanish never settled this area, they would empty their bilges so the ocean would wash away their effluence.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2016

Since hitchhiking to the Great Lakes in the bilges of ocean-going ships, they have expanded virtually unchecked and are considered a major threat to waterways including Lake Erie.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 29, 2015

With each dip and plunge of the boat, Worsley swooped the pot up in the air lest their precious hoosh go slopping into the bilges.

From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong

Many of them bilged, or failed to graduate!

From Time Magazine Archive

Friday the 15th, the ship was bilged in the mid-ship, on a great rock; we took care to secure some powder, ball, and a little bread.

From A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time by Robert Kerr

“Well; up at a early hour next mornin’, we found the boat had drifted off seaward, an’ got bilged on the breakers.

From The Flag of Distress A Story of the South Sea by Mayne Reid

But two of the members of the class had "bilged."

From Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

About the same time Captain Purvis, while chasing a French ship, got his vessel on a ledge of rocks, where she was bilged.

From How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves Updated to 1900 by William Henry Giles Kingston

"And that perhaps you've saved us from bilging?" added Midshipman Hayes.

From Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

In another instant she would be bilging helplessly among the sands of Africa, or would be on her course free and unimpeded for the shores of America!

From Ran Away to Sea by Mayne Reid

The Tryal was a great way to leeward, having lost her main-mast in the squall, and having been obliged to cut away the wreck, for fear of bilging.

From A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time by Robert Kerr

The Trial sloop was a great way to leeward, having lost her mainmast in this squall, and having been obliged, for fear of bilging, to cut away the wreck.

From Anson's Voyage Round the World The Text Reduced by H. W. Household

She was bilging fast, with an ominous list to larboard, and it could be no more than a question of moments before she settled down.

From Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini