larboard

Etymology
From, , most likely referring to the side of the ship on which cargo was loaded. Changed to larboard in the 16th century by association with. (Texts from the 1500s have spellings like lerbord, leereboord, larboord, corresponding to how they spell sterbord, steereboord, starboord.)

Noun

 * 1)  The left side of a ship, looking from the stern forward to the bow; port side.

Usage notes

 * In 1833, Henry W. Acland used the term "set sail on larboard tack" in his "Log of the Vansittart" (Ms. Acland d. 197, Bodleian Library)
 * In 1844, the Royal Navy ordered that port be used instead of larboard in reference to that side of a ship; port had been used since at least the 1500s and was already the usual term when referring to the helm (ie. sailing direction), in order to avoid any confusion between starboard and larboard in such an important matter. The United States Navy followed suit in 1846.
 * Larboard continued to be common into the 1850s by whalers and others. In chapter 12 of Life on the Mississippi (1883) Mark Twain writes larboard was used to refer to the left side of the ship (Mississippi River steamboat) in his days on the river, circa 1857-1861. In his book A Dead Whale Or A Stove Boat (1967) Naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy recalls his 1912-1913 whaling voyage and mentions that the blowhole of a sperm whale is "asymmetrically located on the larboard side ('port' on a modern merchantmen, but larboard on a whaler)."