Do you have a "yacht "or a "sailing boat"?

C08

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When talking about my boat I tend to feel yacht sounds uppity/gives a wrong impression of an old sailing boat so I use the term "old sailing boat". Am alone in feeling that the term yacht gives the wrong impression of a small sailing boat to the general public?
 

ash2020

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When talking about my boat I tend to feel yacht sounds uppity/gives a wrong impression of an old sailing boat so I use the term "old sailing boat". Am alone in feeling that the term yacht gives the wrong impression of a small sailing boat to the general public?
I agree, I never call it a yacht. Even though it cost far less than most peoples' cars and takes hours of hard work and has never been near the Mediterranean. I just get the impression that it would give the idea that you're minted.
 

Poignard

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Is it a peculiarly British thing, this fear of being thought pretentious?

I mean, does it really matter what people think about trivial things when there are far more important things that ought to be being thought about; and talked about?
 

Trident

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I use boat to the public and I think, yacht exclusively for VHF before the name of the vessel - and the vessel is a 50 foot catamaran so might be entitled to be a bit uppity (all be it an older one that I bought cheap and did up) but I think yacht just sounds like one is trying to hard ("It was raining so I took the Porsche to the shops" , when car would do fine in that context)
 
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Wansworth

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Is it a peculiarly British thing, this fear of being thought pretentious?

I mean, does it really matter what people think about trivial things when there are far more important things that ought to be being thought about; and talked about?
Even if it’s a mirror dinghy the Daily Mail will mark you down as a luxuary yacht owner…
 

Trident

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Is it a peculiarly British thing, this fear of being thought pretentious?

I mean, does it really matter what people think about trivial things when there are far more important things that ought to be being thought about; and talked about?
I think its a British thing go with understatement - one wouldn't want to emulate those blow-hard colonials now would we?
 

RunAgroundHard

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Yacht and boat are used, never thought about the word yacht being considered pretentious. Then again, some folks are queer, and some British citizens have a problem with image, especially class. That's their issue, not mine.
 

Refueler

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In actual terms - it depends on the century you are talking about - as each term / class of waterborne has a name .. and Yacht is a term of a specific class ...

Today of course it has lost its meaning ...
 

KevinV

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At 22' I only ever use yacht in jest - it's boat the rest of the time.

Funnily enough I find a lot of the non-boating public associate yacht with a gin-palace - as in the super yachts that make the news.
 

MADRIGAL

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At 22' I only ever use yacht in jest - it's boat the rest of the time.

Funnily enough I find a lot of the non-boating public associate yacht with a gin-palace - as in the super yachts that make the news.
Agreed. And at sixteen feet, calling Madrigal a yacht would definitely be a jest, though certainly meeting the definition of "a vessel used for pleasure". We generally use "sailing dinghy", to differentiate her from the rubber tenders that are now often called dinghies.
 
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