sea lawyer

English

Alternative forms

• sea-lawyer

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Noun

sea lawyer (plural sea lawyers)

1. A lawyer who specializes in maritime law.
2. (nautical, slang) A rules lawyer.
3. (nautical, slang, archaic) A shark.
   • 1852, The Spectator - Volume 25, page 807:

     Well, I will say, I think the sea lawyer is worse than the chaps on shore. I would rather see Mother Carey's chickens any day than a shark following a ship.

   • 1859, The boy's own sea stories; the adventures of a sailor, narrated by himself:

     The extraordinary number of these sea lawyers present, was equalled only by their rapacity. Before we began cutting-in, they had already commenced their meal. Taking advantage of a heave of the swell, a shark would wriggle up on top of the whale, and setting his wide opened mouth against the solid blubber, would bite out a piece as round as and about the size of a man's head.

   • 1878, Eneas Sweetland Dallas, Once a Week, page 112:

     On rising, and casting another hasty glance at the big head and huge back fin of my enemy, I saw that he was evidently hungry and excited, and making frantic efforts to get at me; but that, being a big shark, success in his laudable attempts was not within the resources of science -- in fact, morally and physically impossible, for there was scarcely water enough to swim a good-sized salmon. Being convinced of this highly comfortable state of things, I at once became cool and jolly; and, calling out to Frank to run to the United States Hotel, and fetch my rifle and a little bag of ammunition, which I always kept handy for chance occasions of sport, I prepared to have a little “chaff” with the “sea lawyer".