🚀 go-pugleaf

>> 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