Vocabulary Lesson: 'sabot'

Learned a new word today. Some "sabots" from my November 5 beach walk.

A little earlier, I was browsing a blog called Plastic Forever, by two artists, Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who have been collecting beach plastic and creating art from it far longer than I have even been thinking about it. They are very inspiring — I mentioned them once before, though not by name.

Curiosity and a deeper web search led me to this story on the Fake Plastic Fish blog — in which the blogger spends the day with the Langs and also posts some fascinating photos of their studio, in which they have sorted their endless collection. It is there that I came across some familiar looking items — plastic things that I have also removed from the beach, but never knew for sure what they were. I mused in the past that they were perhaps pieces of fireworks, but it seems they are something slightly more sinister — something called "sabots."

From the Oxford American Dictionary Mac widget: "sabot — a device that ensures the correct positioning of a bullet or shell in the barrel of a gun."

What are these doing on my beach?