Word.ws English Dictionary

all hands to the deck

all hands to the deck is the alternative form of all hands on deck.

Meaning of all hands on deck

Interjection

  1. An order, on board ship, for all seamen of all watches to muster on deck immediately; normally shortened to "All hands"
    • As soon as the boche and his guard were aboard again, I called all hands on deck, including von Schoenvorts, and there I explained to them that the time had come for us to enter into some sort of an agreement among ourselves that would relieve us of the annoyance and embarrassment of being divided...1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Chapter V”, in The Land That Time Forgot
  2. (broadly) A call for everyone to participate in something.
    • It was all hands to the deck in the Swindon penalty box.2000 March 12, Stuart Barnes, “Swindon stunner for Curbishley”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about all hands to the deck

What is all hands to the deck the alternative form of?
All hands to the deck is the alternative form of all hands on deck.

Words near all hands to the deck in the dictionary

  1. All Hallows Eve
  2. All Hallows' Day
  3. All Hallows' Eve
  4. all hands
  5. all hands on deck
  6. all hands to the deck
  7. all hands to the pump
  8. all hat and no cattle
  9. all hat and no cowboy
  10. all hat, no ranch
  11. all heart

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all hands to the deck (page history and authors); all hands on deck (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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