Table of Contents
Gerry
Under the Weather
1. ill.
I feel sort of under the weather today. Whatever I ate for lunch is making me feel a bit under the weather.
2. intoxicated.
Daddy’s had a few beers and is under the weather again. Wally’s just a tad under the weather.
Originally, sailors used the phrase “under the weather bow,” referring to the side of the ship that would get the brunt of the wind during storms. To avoid getting seasick when the waves got rough, they’d bunker down in their cabins—literally under that bad weather—to let the storm pass. Being the weather bow, this part of the ship would mostly stay heeled over with the wind and not roll both ways. It first appeared in print in 1835 in the Jefferson Daily Evening News, describing conditions aboard a sailing ship during a harsh Atlantic storm but the phrase almost certainly predates that publication.
Most early sailing ships before the advent of streamlined clipper ships, had round bottoms, a small keel and used ballast to keep them upright. In any sort of weather they tended to roll badly and seasickness was common among even the most experienced crew. Lord Nelson himself was famously ill every time he put to sea and didn’t leave his cabin for the first three or four days of a voyage.
Interestingly in order to help sailors avoid seasickness, many warships with Command and Control centres below decks in windowless rooms, would project a laser line onto the walls that moved in sync with the real horizon. Being able to orientate to this line apparently helped.
Nowadays this old nautical phrase is more frequently used to indicate general feelings of malaise from any reason, including hangovers, colds and ‘flu and those times you need to use up all that lovely extra sick leave.
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