July 3, 1998

three sheets to the wind

My cronies and I were enjoying a few post-week margaritas on Friday night, when one notorious light-weight exclaimed that if she finished her drink she would be "three sheets to the wind." Now I've heard this expression a million times but I've never really understood why we equate it to inebriation. Any clues?

The expression three sheets to the wind, which means 'extremely drunk', mystifies many people. The key to understanding it is that there are two different sheets, and this expression uses the other one.

The usual sense of sheet is 'a large, thin, rectangular piece of fabric used as bedding', with a host of subsenses. This word is from Old English, and is related to similar words in other Germanic languages.

The word sheet in our expression is the nautical sheet, meaning 'a rope, chain, etc. used to secure or adjust the sail of a ship'. This word is also ultimately from Old English, a shortening of sheet-line, that is, 'sail-rope', with the sheet the same as our above sheet in the sense 'a sail'.

The original form of the expression was three sheets in the wind (not "to"), which literally means 'with the sail completely unsecured', and thus flapping about, and with the boat itself thus unsteady. (Sails can be secured with varying numbers of sheets, but the square-rigged boats used at the time when the expression became current usually had three sheets.) There are many other nautical expressions for drunkenness, such as "with decks awash," "half seas over," and "over the bay," but few of them have spread so thoroughly to the mainstream.

Three sheets in the wind is first found in the early 1820s in both British and American sources. There are many other variants ("a sheet in the wind," meaning 'somewhat drunk', etc.), and the most common form today is three sheets to the wind.