Meaning: Full to the brim; packed tight.
Background:
'Gunwales' is pronounced like 'gunnels' and it is often spelled that way too.
Here's the definition of gunwales from the OED:
Gunwales: The upper edge of a ship's side; in large vessels, the uppermost
planking, which covers the timber-heads and reaches from the quarter-deck to
the forecastle on either side; in small craft, a piece of timber extending
round the top side of the hull.
The expressions 'full to the gunwales' or 'packed to the gunwales' were first
used as literal references to heavily loaded ships. 'Gunwales' may have been a
15th century word, but there's no mention of the phrase until the 19th century,
as in the Unitarian periodical, The Monthly Repository, 1834:
This is the Island of the Golden Fruit. Look, yonder they come! boats - one,
two, three, five, a dozen! all laden up to the gunwales with the juicy balls.
An example of a properly figurative use, that is, one set on land rather than
aboard ship, comes from The New York Magazine, June 1969:
A popular East Side bar, packed to the gunwales with arch young bankers and
panicky, pathetic, ersatz Now girls.
- www.phrases.org.uk
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I'm fascinated by nautical words such as fore, aft, lee, port, starboard, and
recently learned abeam.
It is great to learn here the correct pronounciation of 'gunwale.'
I guess "ersatz Now girls" were simply girls dressed like those pictured in the
NOW magazine.
