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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
portage
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At the next portage we change seats and Rob drives us as we head towards Savernake and Bruce Tunnel.
▪ Immediately came a rapid which they decided to portage.
▪ Perry Barr 1st Flight offers a wide, easy portage down past the sports stadium.
▪ The canyon relented a little at times, so they could portage, but the river did not.
▪ The falls were so dangerous that most people labored to portage around them rather than try to run the waters.
▪ The rapids was bookended by cliffs; there was no way to portage and no way to line.
▪ They would only run the rapid if they couldn't line or portage.
▪ Tiffany, now 13, helps paddle and carries her mom in a backpack when they portage.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Portage

Portage \Port"age\ (?; 48), n. [From 2d Port.] (Naut.)

  1. A sailor's wages when in port.

  2. The amount of a sailor's wages for a voyage.

Portage

Portage \Port"age\, n. [3d Port.] A porthole. [Obs.]
--Shak.

Portage

Portage \Por"tage\, n. [F., from porter to carry. See Port to carry.]

  1. The act of carrying or transporting.

  2. The price of carriage; porterage.
    --Bp. Fell.

  3. Capacity for carrying; tonnage. [Obs.]
    --Hakluyt.

  4. A carry between navigable waters. See 3d Carry.

Portage

Portage \Por"tage\, v. t. & i. To carry (goods, boats, etc.) overland between navigable waters.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
portage

early 15c., "action of carrying," said to be from Old French portage, Medieval Latin portaticum, though the meaning of these was "tax paid on entering a town," from Latin portare "to carry" (see port (n.1)). Sense of "carrying of boats from one navigable water to another" is from 1690s, reinforced in Canadian French.

Wiktionary
portage

n. 1 An act of carrying, especially the carrying of a boat overland between two waterways. 2 The route used for such carrying. 3 A charge made for carrying something. 4 Carrying capacity; tonnage. 5 The wages paid to a sailor when in port, or for a voyage. 6 A porthole. vb. (context nautical English) To carry a boat overland

WordNet
portage
  1. n. the cost of carrying or transporting

  2. overland track between navigable waterways

  3. carrying boats and supplies overland

Gazetteer
Portage, WI -- U.S. city in Wisconsin
Population (2000): 9728
Housing Units (2000): 3970
Land area (2000): 8.293974 sq. miles (21.481293 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.726675 sq. miles (1.882080 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 9.020649 sq. miles (23.363373 sq. km)
FIPS code: 64100
Located within: Wisconsin (WI), FIPS 55
Location: 43.545704 N, 89.463199 W
ZIP Codes (1990): 53901
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, WI
Portage
Portage, OH -- U.S. village in Ohio
Population (2000): 428
Housing Units (2000): 166
Land area (2000): 1.496760 sq. miles (3.876591 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 1.496760 sq. miles (3.876591 sq. km)
FIPS code: 64108
Located within: Ohio (OH), FIPS 39
Location: 41.326157 N, 83.649646 W
ZIP Codes (1990): 43451
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, OH
Portage
Portage, IN -- U.S. city in Indiana
Population (2000): 33496
Housing Units (2000): 13375
Land area (2000): 25.456487 sq. miles (65.931996 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 1.970463 sq. miles (5.103475 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 27.426950 sq. miles (71.035471 sq. km)
FIPS code: 61092
Located within: Indiana (IN), FIPS 18
Location: 41.581850 N, 87.186553 W
ZIP Codes (1990): 46368
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, IN
Portage
Portage, PA -- U.S. borough in Pennsylvania
Population (2000): 2837
Housing Units (2000): 1367
Land area (2000): 0.665538 sq. miles (1.723735 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 0.665538 sq. miles (1.723735 sq. km)
FIPS code: 62048
Located within: Pennsylvania (PA), FIPS 42
Location: 40.386858 N, 78.673593 W
ZIP Codes (1990):
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, PA
Portage
Portage, UT -- U.S. town in Utah
Population (2000): 257
Housing Units (2000): 83
Land area (2000): 2.283280 sq. miles (5.913668 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 2.283280 sq. miles (5.913668 sq. km)
FIPS code: 61590
Located within: Utah (UT), FIPS 49
Location: 41.976542 N, 112.240844 W
ZIP Codes (1990):
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, UT
Portage
Portage, MI -- U.S. city in Michigan
Population (2000): 44897
Housing Units (2000): 18880
Land area (2000): 32.203165 sq. miles (83.405811 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 2.822819 sq. miles (7.311068 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 35.025984 sq. miles (90.716879 sq. km)
FIPS code: 65560
Located within: Michigan (MI), FIPS 26
Location: 42.209592 N, 85.588525 W
ZIP Codes (1990):
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Portage, MI
Portage
Portage -- U.S. County in Ohio
Population (2000): 152061
Housing Units (2000): 60096
Land area (2000): 492.389684 sq. miles (1275.283374 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 14.717306 sq. miles (38.117647 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 507.106990 sq. miles (1313.401021 sq. km)
Located within: Ohio (OH), FIPS 39
Location: 41.172189 N, 81.253721 W
Headwords:
Portage
Portage, OH
Portage County
Portage County, OH
Portage -- U.S. County in Wisconsin
Population (2000): 67182
Housing Units (2000): 26589
Land area (2000): 806.310758 sq. miles (2088.335187 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 16.452491 sq. miles (42.611754 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 822.763249 sq. miles (2130.946941 sq. km)
Located within: Wisconsin (WI), FIPS 55
Location: 44.486525 N, 89.522423 W
Headwords:
Portage
Portage, WI
Portage County
Portage County, WI
Wikipedia
Portage

Portage or portaging is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A place where this carrying occurs is also called a portage.

Early French explorers in New France and French Louisiana encountered many rapids and cascades. The Native Americans carried their canoes over land to avoid river obstacles.

Over time, important portages were sometimes provided with canals with locks, and even portage railways. Primitive portaging generally involves carrying the vessel and its contents across the portage in multiple trips. Small canoes can be portaged by carrying them inverted over one's shoulders and the center strut may be designed in the style of a yoke to facilitate this. Historically, voyageurs often employed tump lines on their heads to carry loads on their backs.

Portages can be many kilometers in length, such as the Methye Portage and the Grand Portage (both in North America) often covering hilly or difficult terrain. Some portages involve very little elevation change, such as the very short Mavis Grind in Shetland, which crosses an isthmus.

Portage (software)

Portage is a package management system originally created for and used by Gentoo Linux and also by Chrome OS, Sabayon, and Funtoo Linux among others. Portage is based on the concept of ports collections. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a meta-distribution due to the extreme flexibility of Portage, which makes it operating-system-independent. The Gentoo/Alt project is concerned with using Portage to manage other operating systems, such as BSDs, Mac OS X and Solaris. The most notable of these implementations is the Gentoo/FreeBSD project.

There is an ongoing effort called the Package Manager Specification project (PMS) to standardise and document the behaviour of Portage, allowing the ebuild tree and Gentoo system packages to be used with alternate package managers such as Paludis and pkgcore. Its goal is to specify the exact set of features and behaviour of package managers and ebuilds, serving as an authoritative reference for Portage.

Portage (electoral district)

Portage was a federal electoral district in Manitoba, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1968 to 1979.

This riding was created in 1966 from parts of Lisgar, Portage—Neepawa, Selkirk, Springfield, and St. Boniface ridings

It was abolished in 1976 when it was redistributed into Lisgar, Portage—Marquette, Winnipeg North, Selkirk—Interlake, Winnipeg North Centre and Winnipeg—Assiniboine ridings.

Portage (disambiguation)

Portage may refer to one of the following.

  • Portage, the practice of carrying a canoe or other boat over land to avoid an obstacle on the water route
  • Portage (software), the package management system for Gentoo Linux

Usage examples of "portage".

If he had ever been through these muskeg ponds before, he would not have forgotten the location of a portage.

They had no trouble finding the last portage from the chain of muskeg ponds, for it was easily observed when they approached it.

The incident at the muskeg portage was proof that Alphonse had made false pretense of his familiarity with this district.

Light canoes sometimes venture down this fatal gulf, to avoid the portage, unappalled by the warning crosses which overhang the brink, the mournful records of former failures.

Hence, in 1851, Muraviov established the factory of Nikolaievsk, near the mouth of the Amur, and those of Mariinsk and Alexandrovsk at either end of the portage connecting that river with the Bay of Castries.

September 26, steers his canoes up the shallow Assiniboine far as what is now known as Portage La Prairie, where a trail leads overland to the Saskatchewan and so down to the English traders of Hudson Bay.

MERCHANT PRINCES their retinues came from every corner of the HBCs former empire-Swampy Cree from Hudson and James bays, Saulteaux from Lake Winnipeg, Ojibwas from the Nipigon country, Sioux from the Portage Plains, and mighty warriors from the Peace and Athabasca valleys.

Frederick Whymper, fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, stated on hearsay that the Chilcat Indians were believed occasionally to make a short portage across the Coast Range from salt water to the head-reaches of the Yukon.

We next crossed the Cascade Portage, which is the last on the way to the Athabasca Lake, and soon afterwards came to some Indian tents, containing five families, belonging to the Chipewyan tribe.

A mile portage connected Lake Bennett and Lake Linderman, and his last words he flung back after him as he resumed the trot.

Not all paths have evolved into railroads, but the railroads have followed practically all of these natural paths-- paths of the coureurs de bois, instinctively searching for mountain passes, the low portages from valley to valley, the shortest ways and the easiest grades.

CHAPTER XII WESTERN TOWNS AND CITIES THAT HAVE SPRUNG FROM FRENCH PORTAGE PATHS The old French PORTAGE paths were also fruitful of cities on the edge of the Mississippi Valley, though the growth of these short paths was not-- with one notable exception--as luxuriant as that from the earth enriched of human blood and bones about the old French forts.

These portages, or carrying paths, which differ from the trails of the wood runners in that they are but short interruptions of the water paths and were not designed or laid out, as a rule, by the wild engineers of the forests and prairies but by human feet, lie across the great highway along which, before the days of canals, one might have walked dry-shod from the Atlantic to the Pacific--between the basins of the St.

There were, to be sure, still other portage paths than those across watersheds, and the most common were those that led around waterfalls or impassable rapids, such as Champlain and the Jesuits followed on their journeys up the Ottawa to the Nipissing.

It was of such portages that Father Brebeuf wrote--portage paths passing almost continually by torrents, by precipices, and by places that were horrible in every way.