I was not drunk when I wrote this entry. Well, maybe I was. I can’t remember.
For a long time, I puzzled over the euphemistic phrase “three sheets to the wind,” meaning “drunk.” I understood “blitzed.” The term “shitfaced” is a little oblique, but not in any way beyond immediate comprehension. “Blotto” I got. “Trashed,” “hammered,” “nicely irrigated with horizontal lubricant,” “zombied,” “wasted,” “pissed up” (for the Brits)—all these things I understood. But unless the sheets had something to do with college-debauched toga parties or the comfy coverings under which I would pass out, I wasn’t quite catching on.
Something to do with sailboats, I remembered, when teetering to a vaguely upright position the next morning, and indeed the cliche exhibits nautical origin in rare defiance of the wordori- gins.org CANOE theory, which forecasts the tendency to assign sea-going origins to words (for more on this, see also a delicately unnamed entry beginning on page 58). I was still puzzled, figuring that a sailboat with three billowy sails being pressed ahead by steady winds would sail smoothly and powerfully, without crossing the centerline once, twice, ohmygawd!, flashing lights in my rearview mirror! Sheet, man!
The phrase “three sheets to the wind” implied to me “full sail.” But, because I’ve done very little sailing, sober or otherwise, I had
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Bill Brohaugh
no clue that the sheets are not the bedsheet-like sails that puff up proudly in the wind—the sheets are the ropes that hold the sails in place. Four sheets, four ropes, per sail. Sheet in this sense traces back to Old English, as does the fabric-version of the word, but with different origins.
Now, if a couple of those ropes lose their mooring to the boat, the wind will whip both the sheets and the sail about vigorously. If three of the four sheets on a sail are loose, the ship will likely move erratically, slur its words, cross the centerline once, twice, ohmy- gawd!, flashing lights in my rearview mirror!