Author: Kirk

“Three sheets to the wind”

Euphemisms

I heard this phrase the other day on the television program Dirty Sexy Money.

I knew what it meant — staggering drunk — but wasn’t sure about its origin, so I searched Google for “three sheets to the wind” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 70,500 matches.

According to one source, a “sheet” is a rope for securing a ship’s sail, not the sail itself. A “square-rigged” ship uses three ropes or sheets to tie a sail to the ship. If all three sheets are loose and therefore blowing in the wind, then the sail will be loose, causing the ship to go off course, just like a drunken sailor.

According to many articles, such as at World Wide Words, Pierce Egan in his 1821 work Real Life in London was the first to record the phrase “three sheets in the wind”.

This phrase has morphed since then to the much more popular “three sheets to the wind”.

“Nintendo is going to sell eleventy billion of them.”

Adjectives, Euphemisms, Outsider's Perspective

I saw this in an Ars Technica article published today about the Nintendo DSi.

I like the creativity of “eleventy billion”.

I searched for “eleventy” (with the quotation marks) on Google, and I got about 304,000 matches.

According to Wikipedia, the word “eleventy” was coined by linguist and author J. R. R. Tolkien and refers to the number 110.

I can imagine that some non-native speakers of English must be puzzled when they see this word, but it also makes sense when one compares it to the rhyming word “seventy”.

“… its on sale …”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Contractions, Possessives

I saw this today in an online news article about the recent launch of the Sprint XOHM service in Baltimore, Maryland.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
The complete sentence was You can attach one of four service plans to your XOHM devices: The “home” plan works with the home modem, for 35 a month (its on sale through December 31st for25), the “On the go” plan is for the ExpressCard, at 45 a month (30 on sale.), and “Pick 2” lets you get two devices (a modem and a card, for instance) for 65 a month (50 on sale).

The word “its” — spelled I-T-S — is a possessive pronoun.

The article writer is trying to say that the home-plan service is on sale through December 31, 2008, with “it” substituting for the name of this service.

In other words, the expression should have been written with the contraction form of “it is” in “… it is on sale …”.

Solution:
“… it’s on sale …”