abordage means the act of boarding a ship as part of an attack. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
ABORDAGE — [Noun] The tactical act of forcibly boarding an enemy vessel, especially as the decisive phase of a naval assault. Borrowed from French abordage, from aborder ("to board a ship") + -age (suffix forming nouns of action). Unlike "boarding," a neutral term for any embarkation, or "piracy," the encompassing criminal enterprise, abordage is the precise, violent hinge between naval maneuver and personal combat. It is the splintering crack of grapnels biting into alien timber, the sulfurous haze of gunpowder over a narrowing strip of water, and the shuddering, intimate impact of hull against hull—the formalized point where strategy dissolves into pure anatomy, a brutal intimacy that reduces the vastness of the sea to the width of a sword.
noun
- The act of boarding a ship as part of an attack.“But when we must proceed on one of our abordages, the heart of Francis Burke was in his boots; […]”