What Are Some Pejorative Terms for the Words "Boat" or "Ship"? [closed]

Calling a ship a boat, is sometimes considered derisive. Also, calling a type of boat by the name of another type of boat is sometimes considered insulting by its owner. If the boat is a man's mid-life crisis, adding "little" to whatever you call it will surely sting a little extra.

Some ideas & examples:

Little boat: Aww, I like your little boat.

Dinghy: Your dinghy is so cute.

Driftwood: Is that a boat, or a piece of driftwood?

Tub: If your tub is here, then how do you take a bath at home?

Rust bucket: Good thing I had my tetanus shot before climbing into this rust bucket.

A scow.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/scow

Definition #3:

an old or clumsy boat; hulk; tub.

One epithet for a boat that seldom leaves port is 'an expensive hole in the water'.

On the UK canal system, people with traditional narrow boats (70 feet long, with solid steel hulls originally designed to carry 20 tons or more of cargo) sometimes refer to fiberglass hulled craft as "Noddy boats." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(character) for the meaning of Noddy.

Canal and river boat owners who don't keep their boats looking smart are referred to as "Rodney" from the name of a generally incompetent character in a UK sitcom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Trotter.

Traditional narrow boats were often decorated with stylized paintings of roses and castles on the cabin sides. A boat with badly painted roses may be called a "cabbage".

An incompetent canal-boat handler is often called a "sailor" - this may date from the end of WWI, when the commercial narrow boat companies hired unemployed merchant seamen, which was disapproved of by the long-standing canal boatmen, who in were often from families that had been boatmen for many generation, and in some cases literally were born, lived and worked all their lives, and died on their boat.

A modern canal boat that is a poor imitation of the older designs is sometimes called a "Washer josher," because instead of the original hull construction of steel plates riveted together with washers, imitation washers are simply glued onto a fiberglass hull.

A leaky canal boat is called a "watercress boat," since watercress is grown commercially in beds irrigated with shallow running water.

As mentioned in Tony Ennis's answer and Steve Lovell's comment there are a couple of words that refer to old/dilapidated/wrecked boats (such as hulk, wreck and scow) that may be used, but...

...As has been hinted at by other answers and in the comments, the best insults are usually based heavily on context.

If you can think of an insult to call the boat that isn't necessarily nautical, then you can add floating in front of it, like floating shed, floating scrap or floating turd (or just floater if you like).

One method of insulting the type of boat is (as has already been mentioned in many other answers) to call it the name of another type of boat that it isn't. Often calling it by the name of a smaller type of boat (e.g. rowing boat), or a cheaper type of boat (e.g. dinghy), or a less glamorous type of boat (e.g. trawler), as many other answers have suggested. Another option is to call it sarcastically by a much bigger/more expensive/more glamorous type of boat (e.g. calling a rusty old trawler a luxury yacht). The context will really influence which type of boat is most appropriate.

Any complimentary epithet about the boat said sarcastically (although this would only work if spoken/incredibly obvious it isn't actually a compliment).

An insult could be related to the apparent imminent sinkability of the boat, e.g. sinker or shipwreck waiting to happen; or to the fact that it leaks, e.g. (to borrow from Harry Potter) leaky cauldron.

Other insults could be related to the person that bought/owns the boat. For example, people going through a midlife crisis often buy expensive/unnecessary items like sports cars, but also boats. You could therefore call it a (floating) midlife crisis. Or, if a man has bought a boat and it's seen as a way to "prove his power/masculinity", you could call it a floating penis extension.

Other methods mentioned in several other answers are:

• to call it something that is vaguely boat-shaped, but not a boat, especially something small (e.g. sardine can)
• call it something that is made from the same thing as the boat, but is not a boat, especially if found at sea (e.g. driftwood)
• use a mixture of the two (e.g. rust bucket).