Naut. [a. F. cabotage (also Sp., in It. cabotaggio) in same sense; f. F. caboter to coast; whence F. has also caboteur, cabotier, cabotin, cabotinage, cabotiner. Derivation uncertain.
Originally a shipping term of the north of France: M. Paul Meyer rejects Littré’s guess from Sp. cabo cape, headland, as if ‘to sail from cape to cape,’ as untenable phonetically and historically, and thinks the verb must be from the name of a kind of boat. The gloss ‘cabo, trabe, nave’ occurs in (MS. Bibl. Nat. 1646 lf. 83 b) a 13th-c. copy of an older glossary; and Littré has cabot, chabot as north French equivalents of sabot, which is still applied to a small vessel running two or three knots an hour. (Brachet guesses that caboter may be from the surname Cabot; which may have had the same origin, but cf. prec.)]
Coasting; coast-pilotage; the coast carrying trade by sea.
1831. Sir J. Sinclair, Corr., II. 186. The Cabotage, as they call it, or carrying trade.
1876. R. Burton, Gorilla L., I. 6. Small vessels belonging to foreigners, and employed in cabotage.
1885. Standard, 2 Jan., 2/1. (Article) The Cabotage in China. [From Shanghai correspondent.]
