[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To stave in a ship’s bottom, cause her to spring a leak.
1557. A. Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, Voy., I. 333. The Trinitie came on ground … and was like to be bilged and lost.
1658. Ussher, Ann., 662. Euphranor … had bilged and sunck one of the enemies ships.
1762–9. Falconer, Shipwr., III. 642. A second shock Bilges the splitting vessel on the rock.
1836. Marryat, Midsh. Easy, xxxi. It was one of the Sicilian government galleys bilged on the rocks.
2. intr. (for refl.) To suffer fracture in the bilge; to be broken or stove in, spring a leak. Also fig.
1728. Morgan, Algiers, II. v. 301. The Ships … were running ashore and bilging on the Rocks.
1748. Anson, Voy., II. iii. 146. She struck on a sunken rock, and soon after bilged.
1870. Lowell, Among My Books, Ser. I. (1873), 223. On which an heroic life … may bilge and go to pieces.
3. trans. and intr. To bulge or swell out.
1807. Vancouver, Agric. Devon (1813), 369. These narrow ways are … by the traffic of the lime-carts, bilged, and forced out upon their sides.
1849–52. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., IV. 941/2. The whole apparatus is capable of bilging outwards in the movements of respiration.
