Our 1st Quarter Freepathon is Underway! - Thread 2

[Mo1]

What does "three sheets to the wind" mean?

You're trashed off your butt

[Gabz]

Woo hoo! We have incoming!

Just in:

$100 from North Carolina
$100 from New York
$75 from Maryland
$20 from Pennsylvania
$20 from Iowa

Thank you all very much!!

[Brad’s Gramma]

Duh.

Monday's are wash days, don't cha know? So, Sunday night you were REALLY TUCKERED OUT from all of the chores and stuff. So, Monday rolls around, you wash the bedding. You hang them outside.

It HAPPENS to be a windy day. Woooooooooshhhhh.....three sheets BLOW OFF OF THE CLOTHES LINE, imagine that?

Three sheets to the wind.

Next question?

[Mo1]

Did you make that up all by yourself??

[Brad’s Gramma]

May I plead the 5th?

[ValerieUSA]

Thanks for the unlikely explanation - I think I'll go with Mo's simpler one, though.

But where did the saying originate?

[Mo1]

NO!

[Brad’s Gramma]

IN THE BACKYARD!!!!!!!!!!

[Gabz]

Have you noticed what a good girl I've been and have stayed out of the lascivious conversation regarding sheets?????

[Mo1]

But where did the saying originate?

If I'm right and it is about drinking .. I'm guessing it's an old irish saying

But heck .. truth is .. I don't have a clue *L*

[NYTexan]

Three sheets to (or in) the wind is a nautical expression. If three sheets - which are the ropes holding the sails rather than the sails themselves - are loose and blowing about then the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor. Dickens uses it in Dombey and Son.

[Mo1]

HA!


http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-thr1.htm

THREE SHEETS IN THE WIND
From Benjamin Weatherston: “How does the term three sheets to the wind denote drunkenness?”
It’s a sailor’s expression, from the days of sailing ships. The terminology of sailing ships is excessively complicated and every time I refer to it people write in to say I’ve got it wrong, usually contradicting each other. So treat what follows as a broad-brush treatment, open to dispute on fine points.
We ignorant landlubbers might think that a sheet is a sail, but in traditional sailing-ship days, a sheet was actually a rope, particularly one attached to the bottom corner of a sail (it actually comes from an Old English term for the corner of a sail). The sheets were vital, since they trimmed the sail to the wind. If they ran loose, the sail would flutter about in the wind and the ship would wallow off its course out of control.
Extend this idea to sailors on shore leave, staggering back to the ship after a good night on the town, well tanked up. The irregular and uncertain locomotion of these jolly tars must have reminded onlookers of the way a ship moved in which the sheets were loose. Perhaps one loose sheet might not have been enough to get the image across, so the speakers borrowed the idea of a three-masted sailing ship with three sheets loose, so the saying became three sheets in the wind.
Our first written example comes from that recorder of low life, Pierce Egan, in his Real life in London of 1821. But it must surely be much older.
The version you give, incidentally, is comparatively recent, since the older one (the only one given in the big Oxford English Dictionary) is three sheets in the wind. However, online searches show that your version is now about ten times as common as the one containing in, so it may be that some day soon it will be the only one around. The version with to seems to be gaining ground because so many people think a sheet is a sail.

[Gabz]

I'm inclined to go with the sailing reference.

"Sheets" is a nautical term for sails and the more in the wind there are the more chance of rocking and tipping etc because of the high winds........

Listing to starboard is another common description of someone who has partaken more of the adult beverage than advisable.

[Brad’s Gramma]

[Brad’s Gramma]

I have. You are to be commended.

[Mo1]

You're good .. I nver knew that before

[Gabz]

I stand corrected - well, actually I'm sitting - but you know what I mean.

[glock rocks]

What does "three sheets to the wind" mean?

Mo's doin laundry?

[Gabz]

Thank you.

[NYTexan]

...just learned myself!