A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
neap
A neap tide is the weakest tide of the cycle, with the smallest range between high and low water. It occurs twice a month, at the first and last quarter of the moon, when the sun and moon pull at right angles to each other and their effects partly cancel. Its opposite is the spring tide at new and full moon, when the two pull together and the range is greatest.
Etymology
The word is Old English and its further origin is not established, though the sense appears to have been something like scanty or lacking. The pairing with spring confuses people constantly: a spring tide has nothing to do with the season and uses spring in the sense of leaping or welling up, the same sense as a spring of water.
Notes
The practical consequence is that a neap tide gives you less water on the flood and less beach on the ebb, which matters to anyone crossing a bar, working a shore, or landing a boat. Anchorages that dry at springs may stay afloat through neaps. The word survives in neaped, said of a vessel run aground on a high spring tide that cannot float off until the next one.