Call in sick, cancel lunch with a friend, or skip choir practice, and you'll probably say it: I'm feeling a little under the weather. Everyone knows what it means. But how exactly does a person get under the weather? It sounds like you'd need to crawl beneath a rain cloud.
Today the phrase simply means feeling ill or out of sorts. Where it came from isn't certain, but one explanation points to the sea. On old sailing ships, being under the weather meant standing watch on the weather side of the ship, the side facing the wind, exposed to cold wind and spray. It's easy to see how that miserable job could turn into a phrase for feeling lousy.
The Weather Side of a Ship
Sailors had special words for each side of a ship. The weather side, also called the windward side, faces into the wind, the direction it's blowing from. The opposite side, sheltered from the wind, is called the lee side.
A sailor serving a watch on the weather side would take the full force of the wind and the salty spray off the waves, often for hours. Nobody would envy him. In that sense, under the weather described someone who was cold, wet, and probably not feeling his best.
As with many old sayings, word historians can't always prove exactly how a phrase began. So it's best to think of the sailing explanation as a likely story rather than a settled fact.
A Word of Caution About Sea Stories
Plenty of popular sayings come with colorful stories about sailors and ships, and some of them are simply made up. A famous example is brass monkey weather. Many people believe it refers to cannonballs falling off a brass rack in the cold. That's false, because cannonballs weren't stored that way. An 1857 version of the saying mentions freezing the tail off a brass monkey, which probably refers to a common type of souvenir.
So it pays to be a little skeptical. Still, sailing life gave English a surprising number of everyday expressions.
Other Sayings With Salty Roots
Learn the ropes comes from training new sailors to know which of a ship's many ropes did which job, often in the dark. A single mast could carry up to five square sails, each with several ropes of its own.
Taken aback described a dangerous moment when the wind suddenly blew into the sails backward, often because the helmsman wasn't paying attention. By and large came from sailing terms for heading into the wind and sailing with it, so it meant in all situations.
A loose cannon was exactly what it sounds like: a heavy gun rolling free that could crush anyone in its path or even punch a hole in the hull. And pipe down was a signal on the boatswain's whistle at the end of the day, meaning lights out and quiet, please.
Feeling Better Soon
Whatever its true origin, under the weather has become a gentle, polite way to say you're not quite yourself. It's softer than saying you're sick, and it doesn't invite too many questions.
So the next time you're curled up with tea and a blanket, picture those poor sailors on the windward side of a rolling ship. Suddenly a day on the couch doesn't seem so bad. And if you stay under the weather for more than a few days, talk to your doctor.
