A cute, fun, and very informative little book. Like everyone else I was astonished at how many ordinary words and phrases had seafaring origins! Definitely recommended if you're a fan of language and/or all things nautical.

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.

Judging from the confused and inconsistent writing style, you would hardly think that the author is a book editor for a living and has been a life-long sailor. The definitions sometimes tell you how they relate to sailing, sometimes not. Sometimes they tell you how they turned into everyday language, mostly not. Sometimes the definitions of the words as they are used now are incorrect. Barrett should know better than to foist this on the reading public.

Don't bother.

This book explains the origin of various nautical terms. Many terms included in the book I did not realize had a nautical origin. Each explanation is brief, but well written. Very interesting and enlightening.

Three Sheets to the Wind: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions by Cynthia Barrett was an entertaining read.

Cynthia Barrett comes from generations of seafaring men, her grandfather a whaler and her father a Navy man. In her attractive, illustrated volume she offers the entomology of phrases and terms that are rooted in maritime activities.

Presented in alphabetical order, each phrase includes an explanation of its origin and contemporary use, illustrated with excerpts from literature ranging from Homer to Melville to Patrick O'Brian.

I was a girl when I discovered Joan Lowell's pseudo-biography of a girl's life growing up on a sailing ship, Cradle of the Deep, and ever since I have enjoyed reading books about the age of sail, including the Nordoff and Hall Bounty books and Forester's Horatio Hornblower books. So, I was familiar with the original meanings of many of the terms, but others were a revelation.

When Archie Bunker called Edith a "dingbat" who knew a dingbat was slang for a deck mop made of used rope ends which would fly about uncontrollably while in use?

Speaking of old rope, the ends had to be repaired and spliced during times of calm, the sailors so employed being said to be "at loose ends."

I remember when blue jeans were called dungarees. Dungri is a Hindi word for cotton cloth. The first sailor's pants were made of old sails. Later, blue serge bell bottom pants were invented to make rolling up the pants legs easier for sailors employed at swapping the deck. When I was a teen bell bottom jeans were the rage.

A sailor from Belgium stowed his duds in a bag called a Duffle after the rough woolen cloth they used to make the sailor's clothing.

200 words and expressions are covered, and I am sure many will be surprised to learn the origin of sayings we still employ today.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

I'm not sure if I was expecting more from this book or if I just had a previously untapped reservoir of nautical knowledge but, either way, there was little new to learn in Three Sheets to the Wind. In print it's probably a slim volume, in the kindle preview version it was very short and that was with weird quirks of page layout that resulted in multiple pages with nothing but a border image. I'm not sure the inclusion of passages demonstrating the phrase in literature is useful, particularly since the selected quotations aren't generally meaningful or explanatory. I think a better option might have been something similar to the OED, tracking first and changing uses.

I loved this little book! It is full of interesting words we use that I would have never guessed came from sailors and ships. There was a lot of humor and some scandalous association to common phrases. I highly recommend it.

I thought this book was kind of a hoot! I'm amazed at how much of our everyday words come from these salty sailors! I use a lot of it constantly. I have arthritis, and when it gets bad I tend to grab onto my hip. I call it listing to the starboard side! I've always thought that if there is such a thing as past lives, then I must have been a sailor. My favorite thing from this book? Yeah, that would be a cup of Joe! I won't tell you here, but it was funny how this saying came about! My thanks to Cynthia Barrett, and Netgalley for allowing me to read, enjoy and review this.