Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The act or an instance of carrying.
- noun A charge for carrying.
- noun The carrying of boats and supplies overland between two waterways or around an obstacle to navigation.
- noun A track or route used for such carrying.
- transitive & intransitive verb To transport or travel by portage.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The act of carrying; carriage; transportation.
- noun That which is carried or transported; cargo; freight; baggage.
- noun Tonnage; burden of a vessel.
- noun The price paid for carriage; freight-charges.
- noun A break in a chain of water-communication over which goods, boats, etc., have to be carried, as from one lake, river, or canal to another, or along the banks of rivers round waterfalls, rapids, or the like; a carry.
- To carry; pack, as a boat around a portage.
- To carry; proceed by carrying (a boat or load); make a portage.
- noun An opening; a port or port-hole.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete A porthole.
- verb To carry (goods, boats, etc.) overland between navigable waters.
- noun The act of carrying or transporting.
- noun The price of carriage; porterage.
- noun obsolete Capacity for carrying; tonnage.
- noun A carry between navigable waters. See 3d
Carry . - noun A sailor's wages when in port.
- noun The amount of a sailor's wages for a voyage.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An act of
carrying , especially the carrying of aboat overland between twowaterways - noun The
route used for such carrying - noun A
charge made for carrying something - verb nautical To carry a boat overland
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun overland track between navigable waterways
- noun the cost of carrying or transporting
- noun carrying boats and supplies overland
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The reason for having children, of course, is so that you can express yourself through their "portage"--and a cargo bike has way more smug-appeal than a rideable stroller:
Nuggets of Wisdom: The Art of Crap Curation BikeSnobNYC 2010
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A portage is a place between lakes and rivers where the waters become so shallow or rapid that they cannot be navigated, and the boats have to be lifted ashore and carried overland until it is possible to take to the water again.
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In this, as in every other part of their territories, the Company use boats for the transport of property; but by a very judicious arrangement, much time and labour are saved at this portage, which is said to be twelve miles in length.
Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory Volume I. John M'lean
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The French word portage, for example, was already in common use before the end of the seventeenth century, and soon after came chowder, cache, caribou, voyageur, and various words that, like the last-named, have since become localisms or disappeared altogether.
Chapter 2. The Beginnings of American. 2. Sources of Early Americanisms Henry Louis 1921
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The portage was a short one, scarce two hundred yards in length, and at the upper end was a small green meadow in which river voyagers camped.
Flower of the North James Oliver Curwood 1903
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That appreciation and expression of the beautiful is something that the French explorers in that other world -- the valley reached of the pioneers of the seeing eyes and the understanding hearts -- have carried and will continue to carry over those same portages, to give that virile life of the west some of those higher satisfactions of which this daughter of the portage is the prophetess.
The French in the Heart of America John Finley 1901
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They had reached what is called a portage or carrying-place, and there are hundreds of such places all over Rupert's Land.
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Hodge, who went through this way to the St. Lawrence in the service of the State, calls the portage here a mile and three quarters long, and states that Mud Pond has been found to be fourteen feet higher than Umbazookskus Lake.
The Maine Woods 1858
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We set out on the 14th before day, and effected the portage, which is long and difficult.
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The portage is a fine road through a handsome plain.
bilby commented on the word portage
"We had traded our slightly too small aluminum canoe for a much too big dugout. In this vessel, carved from a single tree, seventeen Indians at one time travelled with us. With all their baggage added to ours and everyone aboard, the vast canoe still looked rather empty. Portaging it, this time with only four or five Indians to help, over half a mile of boulders beside a large waterfall, was depressing to contemplate."
- Jean Liedloff, 'The Continuum Concept', 1975.
October 25, 2011