Notes & asides.

Dear Bill: I'm in complete agreement with you and Ms. Kelley Dupuis (Notes & Asides, March 28). She wrote to you lamenting the "singlenounization" of the word "media," and the apparent abolition of the word "sympathy" in favor of its cousin, "empathy."

However, I think there is a more offensive linguistic trend lately. Have you noticed that there are no more "problems"--only "issues"? I always thought that an issue is something to be discussed or debated, while a problem is something to be solved. Now I hear people saying that they have "issues" with certain types of medications (meaning allergic reactions); or "issues" with their real- estate agent, banker, boss, etc. Who is responsible for this development, and why hasn't that person been apprehended and flayed?

As to Mr. Ed Blanchfield's question (same date) regarding the origin of the phrase "three sheets to the wind," The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd ed., states:

   To be "three sheets to the wind" is to
   be drunk. The sheet is the line that
   controls the sails on a ship. If the line
   is not secured, the sail flops in the
   wind, and the ship loses headway and
   control. If all three sails are loose, the
   ship is out of control.

Best wishes,

Joe Rehyansky

Chattanooga, Tenn.

Dear Mr. Buckley: Regarding the query on the origin of "three sheets to [in?] the wind," Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable indicates that the phrase is indeed of nautical origin. A "sheet" (line or rope) is attached to the clew of a sail for trimming, and if the sheet is loose, it is "in the wind," a nautical term for being tipsy.

Brewer also cites Dickens's Dombey and Son (chapter 39):

   Captain Cuttle looking, candle in
   hand, at Bunsby more attentively, perceived
   that he was three sheets in
   the wind, or, in plain words,
   drunk.

Sincerely,

Fred Stumpp

Southport, N.C.

Dear Mr. Buckley: Mr. Ed Blanchfield wanted to know the origin of the phrase "three sheets to the wind."

The phrase first appeared in Pierce Egan's Life in London, in 1821. This reference, listed by the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to the phrase "three sheets in the wind." The phrase apparently refers to an out-of-control sailing ship, with the sheet (the line that controls the sail) unsecured, leaving the sails flopping uselessly in the wind. A staggering, drunken sailor would presumably resemble such a ship.

Perhaps the transformation to "three sheets to the wind" results from the misconception that "sheet" refers to the sail itself, not the line.

Yours cordially,

Ed Sherling, M.D.

Atlanta, Ga.

Dear Mr. Buckley: I read with interest a letter you published from Ed Blanchfield regarding the meaning of "three sheets to the wind." Surprisingly, you were stumped, which probably means that you don't have a copy of Robert Hendrickson's excellent and entertaining resource: The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (2000). In it, he explains that the reference to sheets is not to sails, but rather to the rope attached to the lower corner of the sail that is used for shortening and extending it (something you obviously already know, but there are some maritime-challenged readers out there like me). When all three sheets on a three-sail vessel are loosened, allowing it to run free, the sails flap and flutter in the wind. Thus, sailors say that a person who is slightly drunk has one sheet to the wind, and that someone who can barely navigate has three sheets to the wind. The expression was first recorded in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840). This explanation seems plausible enough to me.

Congratulations on your 50th anniversary.

Cordially,

Kevin F. Reed

Washington, D.C.