bilge
Americannoun
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Nautical.
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either of the rounded areas that form the transition between the bottom and the sides on the exterior of a hull.
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Also bilges. (in a hull with a double bottom) an enclosed area between frames at each side of the floors, where seepage collects.
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Also called bilge well. a well into which seepage drains to be pumped away.
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Also called bilge water. seepage accumulated in bilges.
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Slang. bilge water.
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the widest circumference or belly of a cask.
verb (used without object)
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bilges,
present (3rd person singular)
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bilged,
past participle, past
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bilging
present participle
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Nautical.
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to leak in the bilge.
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(of white paint) to turn yellow.
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to bulge or swell out.
verb (used with object)
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bilges,
present (3rd person singular)
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bilged,
past participle, past
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bilging
present participle
noun
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nautical the parts of a vessel's hull where the vertical sides curve inwards to form the bottom
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(often plural) the parts of a vessel between the lowermost floorboards and the bottom
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Also called: bilge water. the dirty water that collects in a vessel's bilge
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informal silly rubbish; nonsense
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the widest part of the belly of a barrel or cask
verb
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(intr) nautical (of a vessel) to take in water at the bilge
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(tr) nautical to damage (a vessel) in the bilge, causing it to leak
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bilgesimple
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bilgessimple
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have bilgedperfect
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has bilgedperfect
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am bilgingprogressive
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are bilgingprogressive
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is bilgingprogressive
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have been bilgingperfect progressive
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has been bilgingperfect progressive
Past
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bilgedsimple
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had bilgedperfect
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was bilgingprogressive
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were bilgingprogressive
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had been bilgingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bilge
First recorded in 1505–15; perhaps variant of bulge
Explanation
The bilge is the lowest part of a ship where the bottom curves up to meet the sides. The water that collects there is also called bilge. Since bilge is dirty and smelly, the word is also slang for “nonsense.” On a large ship, some water inevitably ends up in the part that’s below the water line, the bilge. Because the bilge tends to sit there for a long time, sloshing around and mixing with oil, chemicals, waste, and cleaning products, it tends to stink. Periodically, the bilge is pumped out so the ship doesn't get too heavy and sink. Bilge is thought to be a variation on bulge, originally "wallet or bag," and later "ship's hull."
Vocabulary lists containing bilge
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If you have ever sat at a restaurant, marveling at the bilge offered on the kids’ menu and wondering how on earth we got here, “Picky” has the answers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
“I’m just thrown away here — a nobody,” the sailor who was assigned to clean the bilge said in an interview.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
Emily Bell of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism worried that readers might be deluged with "bilge".
From BBC ● Dec. 6, 2022
Today’s censors argue that work by artists who spew antisemitic bilge or foolish covid-19 policies should disappear.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 7, 2022
A stagnant bilge along the lower bulkhead filled with wet papers and trash.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
She urged measures such as requiring fishers and riverboat operators to bleach boat hulls, bilges, and wells after passing through an affected area.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 20, 2021
We mapped the bilges out in the fall, came back and looked at them in spring, and there was nothing there.
From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2017
But it actually is a Spanish expression, “of where the sea goes”; while the Spanish never settled this area, they would empty their bilges so the ocean would wash away their effluence.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2016
Since hitchhiking to the Great Lakes in the bilges of ocean-going ships, they have expanded virtually unchecked and are considered a major threat to waterways including Lake Erie.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 29, 2015
With each dip and plunge of the boat, Worsley swooped the pot up in the air lest their precious hoosh go slopping into the bilges.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
Many of them bilged, or failed to graduate!
From Time Magazine Archive
One of the Pulo-way people being there, plainly told me that the governor only waited to have her bilged, that he might have the planks to build a praw for himself.
From A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08 by Robert Kerr
“Well; up at a early hour next mornin’, we found the boat had drifted off seaward, an’ got bilged on the breakers.
From The Flag of Distress A Story of the South Sea by Mayne Reid
No vessel of any great burthen, carrying guns, can enter or be wintered there, without incurring the risk of being bilged by the ice of the river Ochota, which flows into or forms the harbour.
From The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 by Robert Walsh
The order was promptly executed, but unhappily without producing the desired result, for in a few moments the ship bilged, and the destruction of the whole crew appeared to be inevitable.
From Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 by William O. S. Gilly
In another instant she would be bilging helplessly among the sands of Africa, or would be on her course free and unimpeded for the shores of America!
From Ran Away to Sea by Mayne Reid
She was bilging fast, with an ominous list to larboard, and it could be no more than a question of moments before she settled down.
From Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
"And that perhaps you've saved us from bilging?" added Midshipman Hayes.
From Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock
The Trial sloop was a great way to leeward, having lost her mainmast in this squall, and having been obliged, for fear of bilging, to cut away the wreck.
From Anson's Voyage Round the World The Text Reduced by H. W. Household
Indeed, to make her safe from bilging, Blood ordered a prompt jettisoning of the forward guns, anchors, and water-casks and whatever else was moveable.
From Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
