Etymology: Of uncertain origin; recorded early in the 18th cent. as skooner, scooner; the present spelling, which occurs only a few years later, may be due to form-association with school, or with Dutch words having initial sch. The word has passed from English into most of the European languages: Dutch schooner, schoener, German schoner, schooner, schuner (recorded 1786), French schooner, schoaner, Danish skonnert, Swedish skonare, skonert. The story commonly told respecting the origin of the word is as follows. When the first schooner was being launched (at Gloucester, Massachusetts, about 1713), a bystander exclaimed ‘Oh, how she scoons!’ The builder, Captain Andrew Robinson, replied, ‘A scooner let her be!’ and the word at once came into use as the name of the new type of vessel. The anecdote, first recorded, on the authority of tradition, in a letter of 1790 (quoted in Babson Hist. Gloucester, p. 252), looks like an invention. The etymology which it embodies, however, is not at all improbable, though there seems to be a lack of evidence for the existence of the alleged New England verb scoon or scun, ‘to skim along on the water’. Compare Scottish (Clydesdale) scon, ‘to make flat stones skip along the surface of the water’, also intransitive, ‘to skip in the manner described’ (Jamieson). The early examples afford strong ground for believing that the word really originated about 1713 in Massachusetts, and probably in the town of Gloucester. The evidence of two or three old prints seems to prove that the type of vessel now called ‘schooner’ existed in England in the 17th cent., but it apparently first came into extensive use in New England.

Etymology: Of obscure origin; perhaps a fanciful use of schooner n.¹