英语词汇three sheets to the wind的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

three sheets to the wind. “Sheets” aren’t sails in nautical use; neither are they bed coverings. A sheet is the rope or chain at- tached to the lower corner of a sail that is used for shortening and extending it. When all three sheets on a three-sailed vessel (such as a ketch) are loosened, allowed to run free, the sails flap and flutter in the wind. Thus sailors would say a person slightly drunk had one sheet to the wind and that someone who could barely navigate had three sheets to the wind. The expression is first recorded in Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840). Professor Albert Huetteman of the University of Massachusetts advised me of another possible derivation of three sheets to the wind: “On Nantucket Island . . . we took the local tour bus, which stopped at the Nantucket windmill. The el- derly gentleman tour guide told us a story of how the windmill keeper’s job was to install the canvas sheets on the four arms of the windmill when the wind conditions were right. If he drank too much, however, he might only install three sheets, thus giv- ing rise to the phrase, ‘three sheets to the wind.’ ”

词汇	three sheets to the wind
词源	three sheets to the wind. “Sheets” aren’t sails in nautical use; neither are they bed coverings. A sheet is the rope or chain at- tached to the lower corner of a sail that is used for shortening and extending it. When all three sheets on a three-sailed vessel (such as a ketch) are loosened, allowed to run free, the sails flap and flutter in the wind. Thus sailors would say a person slightly drunk had one sheet to the wind and that someone who could barely navigate had three sheets to the wind. The expression is first recorded in Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840). Professor Albert Huetteman of the University of Massachusetts advised me of another possible derivation of three sheets to the wind: “On Nantucket Island . . . we took the local tour bus, which stopped at the Nantucket windmill. The el- derly gentleman tour guide told us a story of how the windmill keeper’s job was to install the canvas sheets on the four arms of the windmill when the wind conditions were right. If he drank too much, however, he might only install three sheets, thus giv- ing rise to the phrase, ‘three sheets to the wind.’ ”
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