1600 Snorken

Do you know what they call that blowhole thing on a whale? A snork. It's true. Because it's sort of a nasal orifice and snork comes from same root word as snore.
Actually, I made that up.
It was always a great cocktail party diversion for me when I wanted to entertain a tipsy crowd with deadpan falsehoods. Kind of like Stephen Wright with a bad case of Wikipedia.
So imagine my surprise the other day when for the first time I actually wondered about and researched the origin of the word snorkel. You know snorkels—those tube thingies you breathe through when you are out snorkeling. Paddling around looking at shallow corals and pretty fish in tropical lagoons.
Just about every resort hotel offers options for snorkeling. Which, on the face of it, is not a very attractive name. "The Hilton Luxury Hotel, long known for elegance and fine taste, is proud to offer its elite guests...snorkeling."
Snorkel, it turns out, comes from German submarines. It was a device, not unlike the private version, for getting air into submarines when they were only slightly below the surface. Back in early U-Boat days, they didn’t have nuclear power and electric powered batteries had a very short range, so to run relatively secretly on diesel they had to have an air intake.
And, you know, the crew members had to breathe.
Snorkel comes for the German word Schnorchel meaning "nose or snout," and is related to the word schnarchen "to snore." The device was named for its resemblance to a nose and its noise when in use. Its current meaning for personal devices dates to 1951.
So there you have it. Snorkeling is related to snoring, snorting, and noses after all.
No wonder that whale tale sounded so convincing.
What a fluke.
America, ya gotta love it.