Sailing

The tenth entry is a escota, and English calls it « a sheet ». The word looks like a mistranslation and is not one. On a boat « a sheet » is a rope, the one that sets the angle of a sail to the wind, and it is never the sail itself; the cloth is « the canvas », or « the main » and « the jib » by name. A beginner told to ease the sheet who reaches for the sailcloth has met the oldest trap in the vocabulary. Out of that rope came an idiom that has left the water altogether. « Three sheets to the wind » means thoroughly drunk. Behind it is a boat whose sheets have all been let fly, so the sails flap loose and the hull lurches along with nobody governing it, which is what a drunk man’s walk looked like to whoever coined the phrase. It is still current in British English, more affectionate than censorious, and the number has set hard: nobody says two sheets or four. Portuguese keeps a escota on board and fetches its drunkenness from elsewhere, so três escotas ao vento would say nothing to anybody.