What is the origin of the phrase “three sheets to the wind”?
Meaning – Drunk. Origin: Our colleagues at CANOE, the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything, have been hard at work and, to their great pleasure, they can add this phrase to their list. Three sheets to the wind (or three sheets in the wind) is indeed a nautical expression. To understand this phrase we need to enter the arcane world of nautical terminology. Little is as it seems when onboard ship, so it’s no big surprise that sheets aren’t sails as landlubbers might expect, but ropes, or occasionally, chains. These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor. The earliest printed citation is Pierce Egan Real life in London, 1821: “Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind.” The earliest that makes the association with drunkenness is Richard Dana Jr’s Two years before the mast, 1840: “He seldom went up to the town without coming down
