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Oakum is loose fibre made from old rope. Shipbuilders used to push it into the thin gaps between the wooden planks of a boat, often with tar or pitch, so that water could not sneak in. It looks like a messy handful of brown threads, not like a tool. In older Britain, picking oakum — pulling old rope apart by hand until it became this stuff — was hard, dull work given to prisoners and to people in poorhouses. You will meet the word in sea stories and in history more than in daily talk, because most ships are not built that way now. Though actually the job has not quite vanished: people who still wooden boats may use oakum, or something very like it, for the same leaks.
填船縫用的舊麻繩屑、麻絮
組成From Late Middle English okom / okome, from Old English ācumba, literally “that which has been combed out.” That is ā- (“out / off”) + a verb meaning “to comb,” from the same old family as comb. Oakum is the leftover fibre combed out of rope.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
oakumnoun/ˈəʊkəm/
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historicalCoarse fibres separated by hackling from flax or hemp when preparing the latter for spinning.
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historicalFibres chiefly obtained by untwisting old rope, which are used to caulk or pack gaps between boards of wooden ships and joints in masonry and plumbing, and sometimes for dressing wounds.
- [W]ho should it be but Mr. Daniel, all muffled up, and his face as black as the chimney, and covered with dirt, pitch, and tarr, and powder, and muffled with dirty clouts, and his right eye stopped with okum. He is come last night at five o'clock from the fleete, with a comrade of his that hath endangered another eye.
- It vvas reſolved hovvever to proceed on our Voyage, vvhich vve did for ten Days, in hopes by the Oakums ſvvelling the Leak might grovv leſs; but to our great Surpriſe, after very hard VVeather near Porto Bello, and not being able to reach it, it increaſed to double the Quantity.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。