a place for loading or unloading ships or vessels, particularly a platform of timber, stone or other material along the shore of a harbour or along the bank of a navigable river against which vessels may lie and discharge their cargo or be loaded. The O. Eng. word hwerf meant literally a turning or turning-place (hweorfan, to turn, cf. Goth. hwairban, Gr. napiros, wrist), and was thus used particularly of a bank of earth, a dam which turns the flow of a stream; the cognate word in Dutch, werf, meant a wharf or a shipbuilder's yard, cf. Dan. vaerft, dockyard, and the current meaning of the word is probably borrowed from Dutch or Scandinavian languages.
In English law all water-borne goods must be landed at specified places, in particular hours and under supervision; wharves, which by the Merchant Shipping Act 18 95, § 49 2, include quays, docks and other premises on which goods may be lawfully landed, are either "sufferance wharves," authorized by the commissioners of customs under bond, or "legal wharves" specially appointed by treasury warrant and exempt from bond. There are also wharves authorized by statute or by prescriptive right. The owner or occupier of a wharf is styled a "wharfinger," properly "wharfager," with an intrusive n, as in "messenger" and "passenger."