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Close QuartersClose Quarters : PhrasesMeaning: Close contact with, especially in a military context - close contact with the enemy. Origin: This term has a nautical origin. In the 17th century hand-to-hand skirmishes onboard ships were known as close-fights. The term appears to have been applied both to those fights and to the barriers that sailors erected to keep the enemy at bay. Captain John Smith, in his record of early seafaring terms, - 'The Seaman's Grammar', 1627 is good enough to define the term:
By the mid 18th century that confined defensive space was also called 'close quarters', i.e. the quarters (dwellings) where close fights were conducted. In 1769 William Falconer published 'An universal dictionary of the marine'. Given such an ambitious title we might expect 'close quarters' to be defined there. The good Falconer doesn't let us down and includes:
'Close quarters' was in wide use as a military by both sailors and soldiers for two centuries or more before it began to be used in a figurative sense in other contexts. The earliest of these that I can find is from The [London] Times, 1805:
The first reference that uses 'close quarters' just to mean 'close', i.e. with no fighting alluded to is also from The Times, 1819, in an exchange between the Lord Chancellor and a lawyer:
Phrases Index
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