🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 7 Nov 1997 21:02:40 GMT, petersen@netcom.com (Barbara
Petersen) wrote:

One slight correction:

A "sheet" is a sail.

>
>>> In article <3456A072.3DAE73AA@indiana.edu>, Jason Carlson
>>> <jmcarlso@indiana.edu> writes
>>> I have also heard one that I always thought was strange:
>>> 
>>>         To have three sheets to the wind.
>
>> Doesn't it also mean that when a person is 3 sheets to the wind they
>> are really really drunk?  I remember hear that expression when I was
>> a kid and the person was usually no walking a straight line.
>
>From my tame authority on useless maritime trivia:
>
>"It does, indeed, refer to somebody being very drunk.
>The origin of the expression, as with so many in the English language,
>is nautical. 
>"Sheets" are the lines used to control the angle and tension of a ship's
>sail.  Back in the days of square-riggers, when most of these colourful
>phrases originated, there would often be two sheets on each of the lower
>corners of the sail.  If a ship was sailed by a crew, or sailing master,
>who was incompetent or inexperienced, it was possible for one or more of
>the sheets to come adrift from the deck, and fly loose in the wind,
>usually over the side where it couldn't easily be recovered.  A ship
>with "three sheets to (or in) the wind" was, clearly, not under proper
>control, and would probably be unable to shape a straight course.  
>The expression later came to be used for a sailor on a run ashore,
>who'd imbibed a little too freely, and wasn't in full control of his own
>movements.
>    
>I'd recommend an excellent book called "Salty Dog Talk", by Bill Peyton
>(I think...) for a collection of other such terms."
>
>====
>Barbara Petersen
>petersen@netcom.com
>