Originally Posted by Lord Larehip

Many of the colloquialisms used in English came from sailing:

• “I don’t like the cut of his jib” refers to the jib sail on a ship.
• “I was three sheets to the wind” refers to a sail, often called a sheet, not properly tied down and goes slack in the wind and three such sails makes the ship completely useless as it meanders about on the ocean like a drunk.
• “The cat is out of the bag” refers to the cat-o’-nine-tails used to flog sailors and usually referred to simply as a “cat.” It was kept in a burlap sack while not in use. When a sailor got the wrong person angry, the cat was removed from the bag and sailor was flogged with it. So the phrase simply means some kind of line was crossed.
• “No room to swing a cat” refers to the same flogging instrument and is otherwise self-explanatory.
• “By and large” refers to sailing "large" when the wind is directly behind the ship which sailors refer to as a “bowline.” Sailing "by" was when the wind was not quite behind the ship but slightly offset. It is impossible to sail by and large simultaneously.
• “The whole nine yards” refers to a yard on a mast which holds a sail. There were three yards on all three masts and so if one had a sail flying from each one together, one had the whole nine yards.
• “Mind your Ps and Qs” referred to pints and quarts. If a sailor off the ship in a tavern started getting three sheets to the wind, one of the mates or the master-at-arms might tell him to watch his intake of alcohol by telling him to mind his Ps and Qs…before the cat gets out of the bag.
• “Slush fund” refers to slush which was kept and eventually sold by the cook. In the modern American Navy, lending money with interest is still called “slushing” which is against regulations.
• “I was taken aback” refers to wind conditions in which the sails are blown back against the masts halting all progress.
• “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” refers to a device in which cannonballs were triangularly stacked on deck. It was called a monkey and was made of brass. If the weather got sufficiently cold, the monkey contracted enough to cause the topmost cannonballs to fall off the stack. Almost everybody believes this expression to have a vulgar meaning.

There are all kinds of nautical terms peppering our everyday speech: making headway, getting pooped, pipe down, water-logged, locker, rig, between the devil and deep blue sea, the bitter end, overhaul, dismantle, forge ahead, windfall, field-day, at loggerheads, slow on the uptake, scuttlebutt, toe the line—all nautical terms. For these terms to have made their way into our speech long ago shows how important sailing was and still is.

Originally Posted by Ki

Thought this would be a thread where we could post our favorites songs of the sea, etc. But once again, i'm disappointed in a Larehip thread.

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic

Lord Larehip must spend a lot of time compiling a thread like this, and I found this section of it particularly interesting:-



At last various expressions like swinging a cat makes some sense, though I would dispute the one about the cat out of the bag, which I have always taken to mean "the secret has escaped and cannot be returned to concealment," the same way you can´t easily re-bag a panicking animal.



^ HaHa! I don´t see why not, Ki - that´s what I´m doing anyway, for lack of anything more erudite to contribute :-

Originally Posted by Oriphiel

Yeah, I hear you. When "the cats out of the bag", it means it's too late for any other course of action. One the captain takes out his cat o' nine tails, it's too late to apologize or make excuses, someone's gonna get thwacked. And I also have mostly heard the phrase in reference to a secret becoming known.