25 June 2020
Anyone who studies word origins even cursorily, notes that amateur word sleuths have a tendency to give nautical origins to words and phrases, and seemingly more often than not such origins are wrong. I don’t know why this is, but it is so common that one of the denizens of this site, Dr. Techie, coined an acronym to denote it: CANOE, the Conspiracy to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything.
But despite this tendency, there are a fair number of words and phrases in English that do have their origins in sailing. After all, as the song goes, “Britannia rules the waves.” One of these phrases is by and large, which in general usage means in every respect.
But on the seas, to sail by the wind is to sail as directly into the wind as possible, and to sail large is to run with the wind at one’s back. So, a ship that sails well both by and large performs well in all sorts of winds. These terms date to the late sixteenth century. William Bourne’s 1578 Treasure for Traueilers explains it thusly:
And fyrst thus, as concerning the making of the moulde of any ships, this is to be noted, that those ships that are of easye draft, that is to say, not to goe to deepe in the Sea or water, and wyll beare a good sayle, and doth stere well, that is to say, that it wyll feele the Ruther as soone as the Helme or Tyller is put to or fro, and those ships doe goe or sayle well beeringe or afore the winde, that is to say, the winde to be large or to come right after them, all those ships doe sayle well and close by the winde, that is to say, the Bowline to be haled harde or close, and the ship to stande or come as neare the winde as may be: those Shippes must draw a reasonable draft of water: and also to be a reasonable good length, and these ships wyll goe well a head the sea
Shortly after writing this, Bourne used the phrase by and large in this literal, nautical sense in his Inuentions or Deuises (both books are dated 1578, but the latter references the former, so we know which came first):
For to make a Ship to drawe or goe but little into the water, and to hold a good winde, and to saile well both by and large, were very necessarie, and especially in these our shallowe Seas.
The earliest citation for by and large in the Oxford English Dictionary comes almost a century after Bourne’s works, in Samuel Sturmy’s 1669 The Mariner’s Magazine. Sturmy sums up a discussion on how to handle a ship in various wind conditions with this:
Thus you see the Ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge.
A few decades later, we see the phrase being used metaphorically in the now familiar sense of in all aspects or as a whole. But the overall context is still nautical. In his 1707 The Wooden World Dissected, Edward Ward describes the various types of men found on board ship. He uses an extended sailing metaphor to describe the leadership capabilities of a ship’s lieutenant in comparison to the captain:
But tho’ he trys every way, both by and large, to keep up with his leader, he’s commonly wrong’d very much for want of [S]ail and Skill too, so that how well soever he can weather upon others, he never is able to forereach upon his Commander.
And in his description of the common sailor he uses the phrase plainly, without a deliberate and extended metaphor:
In fine, take this same plain blunt Sea Animal, by and large, in his Tar-Jacket, and wide-kneed Trowzers, and you’ll find him of more intrinsick Value to the Nation, than the most fluttering Beau in it.
By the mid nineteenth century, by and large is being used by those having nothing to do with the sea. From Sylvester Judd’s 1845 novel Margaret:
“The Parson,” said the cow-herd, whom Margaret reached and quieted, “is the worst pair of horns I ever druv [sic], and I have had the business now rising of sixty year, and take it by and large, fifty head a season, and she is the beater of all.”
So, by and large has a rather straightforward, if non-obvious, nautical origin.
Sources:
Bourne, William. A Booke Called the Treasure for Traueilers. London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1578, 20. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
———. Inuentions or Deuises. London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1578, 12. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Judd, Sylvester. Margaret. Boston: Jordan and Wiley, 1845, 283. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, by and large, adv.
Sturmy, Samuel. The Mariner’s Magazine. London: E. Cotes, 1669, 17. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Ward, Edward. The Wooden World Dissected. London: H. Meere, 1707, 35, 107–08.