Home » Educators » Curriculum » Canal Vocabulary

The following lists of words, terms, and concepts have been compiled to provide a working level of comprehension and communication before visiting the National Canal Museum or riding the canal boat ride. 

Aqueduct: a bridge filled with water allowing canal boats to cross rivers or other difficult terrains. 

Bridge: a structure carrying a roadway over a depression or obstacle. 

Canal: an artificial waterway for navigation, for drainage, or for irrigating land. 

Canal Boat: a steerable vessel used on canals for transportation. 

Cargo: the different materials and objects carried by canal boats. 

Coal: a black stony form of fossil carbon that can be burned like wood. 

Conch shell: a sea shell used by canal boatmen to signal the locktender that a boat was approaching the lock. 

Dam: a barrier built across a watercourse to create a pool of water or to divert water into a race or canal. 

Factory: a building where goods are built, assembled, or manufactured, by hand or machine. 

Hoggee: pronounced ho-ge. The hoggee was usually a child 6-16 years old. It was the hoggee's job to take care of the mules and walk alongside them all day. 

Incline plane: a device developed to haul canal boats over hills. The boat was strapped to a rail car and pulled over the hill on tracks. 

Iron: a heavy silver-white metallic element, the most useful of metals. The most common forms are called cast iron, wrought iron and steel. 

Lock: an enclosure, or chamber in a canal, with watertight gates at each end. Used for raising or lowering boats from one elevation to another by filling or draining the water in the chamber. 

Locktender: a person paid to operate the lock for the canal boat. The locktender's family lived in a house alongside the lock to enable the locktender to work the long days. 

Locomotive: a self-propelled engine, running on rails, used to move cars for passengers and freight. 

Manufacture: to make goods by hand or, especially, by machinery, often on a large scale. 

Mule: an animal that is part horse and part donkey. Bigger and stronger than a donkey, hardier than a horse, a mule is an ideal draft animal. 

Navigate: to steer or travel by ship or boat. 

Packet: a special boat designed to carry passengers instead of cargo. Packets traveled faster than cargo boats. 

Railroad: a permanent road having a line of rails fixed to ties and laid on a roadbed, providing a track for rolling stock drawn by locomotives or other motive power. 

Raw Materials: natural or unprocessed minerals or plants from which useful products are derived or manufactured. 

Rudder: a flat movable piece which can be moved from side to side in the water at the back of a boat to steer it. 

Steam: the transparent gas created when water is heated to the boiling point. 

Steam Engine: an engine driven or worked by steam. 

Tiller: a lever for turning the rudder of a boat. 

Toll: a tax or fee paid to use a canal, bridge, turnpike or other transportation link.

Ton: a unit of weight, usually 2,000 pounds. 

Towpath: a trail on the side of the canal where the mules walked pulling or towing the boat. 

Transportation: a means of conveyance or travel from one place to another. 

Water Wheel: a large wheel, turned by the movement of water upon it to power machinery.