Meaning
The emergency cry shouted aboard a vessel when someone falls into the water, repeated by all who hear it until the whole ship is alerted; the phrase also names such an incident itself. By extension it is used of any sudden crisis demanding an immediate, all-hands response. The call stays man overboard regardless of the fallen person's gender. Modern gender-neutral variants include person overboard and crew overboard. The figurative extension - treating a sudden problem as an all-hands emergency - is general current usage rather than a separately dated dictionary sense. Regional use: International; all English varieties.
Origin
This is literal sea language: the alarm announcing that a person has gone over the ship's side. As a noun phrase the OED's earliest evidence is from 1829, in the writing of the playwright and journalist Douglas Jerrold - verified directly on the factsheet. Wiktionary's earliest quotation is later: Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Return of Tarzan (1913), mentioning the always-fearsome call, Man overboard! Wikipedia describes the modern procedure behind the cry: the first witness shouts it, everyone within earshot repeats it, a spotter keeps pointing at the casualty, flotation is thrown, a mayday may be declared, and the Oscar signal flag denotes a man overboard. Before radios and rescue gear the cry genuinely meant an all-hands emergency, which is the bridge to its figurative use for any abrupt crisis that pulls everyone off their tasks.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- crew overboard
- man-overboard drill
- person overboard
Usage Examples
- The lookout shouted 'man overboard' and the cry was repeated fore and aft while the helm went over.
- When the audit landed on Friday afternoon, the office treated it like a man overboard drill: everyone to stations.
- 'Man overboard' is drilled into every cadet on the first day at sea.