The words drift and drive both come from the same Germanic root that means “to push along.” By the 16th century, the English word drift had come to mean “something that a person is driving at,” or in other words, their purpose or intent. The phrase...
Channel fever is “the feeling of excitement or restlessness that sailors experience as their ship nears its home port.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Channel Fever” Here’s a cool term that you might want to extend as a metaphor...
If a suspect is at large, he is moving about freely. The term at large, which comes to us via French from Latin, refers not to size but to distance. The phrase by and large, meaning “generally” or “on the whole,” derives from a nautical term that...
The idiom by and large, an idiom commonly known to mean “in general,” actually combines two sailing terms. To sail by means you’re sailing into the wind. To sail large, means that you have the wind more or less at your back. Therefore, by and large...
The origin of the phrase in the offing is nautical. The offing is the part of the ocean that one can see from shore, so if something’s in the offing, it’s not that far away. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “In the Offing” Grant, I...
A wedding photographer says she happens to run into lots of people who are three sheets to the wind, and wonders why that term came to mean “falling-down drunk.” Turns out, it’s from nautical terminology. On a seagoing vessel, the term sheets refers...
