Early nineteenth-century painting of a French fleet under the weather, riding out a storm in the Bay of Tabarka, Algeria. Five ships being tossed about at anchor in a stormy sea.
4 August 2021
To be under the weather is to be ill or otherwise indisposed. The phrase originated as an Americanism, but it has its roots in an older, British nautical term. To be under the sea or under the weather is to ride out a storm in some protected anchorage. The later American sense is a metaphor for resting quietly until conditions improve.
Under the sea appears by the early seventeenth century. It can be found in a nautical handbook written by John Smith, of Virginia settler-colonist fame. His An Accidence or The Path-Way to Experience Necessary for All Young Sea-Men was published in 1627 and has this:
a storme, hull, lash sure the helme a ley, lye to try our drift, how capes the ship, cun the ship, spoune before the winde, she lusts, she lyes vnder the Sea, trie her with a crose-jacke, bowse it vp with the out looker, she will founder in the Sea
That passage makes little sense to a landlubber (and perhaps even to a sailor). But the following year, in his Sea Grammar, Smith makes it more clear:
When that will not serue then Try the mizen, if that split, or the storme grow so great she cannot beare it; then hull, which is to beare no saile, but to strike a hull is when they would lie obscurely in the Sea, or stay for some consort, lash sure the helme a lee, and so a good ship will lie at ease vnder the Sea as wee terme it.
The phrase under the weather appears by 1786 in an article about a shipwreck in the English Channel that appeared in the New York Daily Advertiser of 17 April 1786:
Had they been fortunate enough to drove clear of that Head Land, they would have got into Swanage or Strickland Bay, where they might have had safe anchorage under the weather.
Metaphorical use of under the weather appears by 1803, but not in the sense of illness as we use it today; rather it is in the sense of being out of touch, not being the middle of the storm. It appears in the context of a rhetorical war between two rival Philadelphia newspapers, the Daily Gazette and the Aurora. Philadelphia was suffering through a yellow fever outbreak, and the editor of the Aurora accused the editor of the Daily Gazette of promulgating false medical information. The Daily Gazette fired back in defense, using a few nautical terms. And in return the Aurora’s editor penned this reply on 17 June 1803, filled to the brim with nautical phrases, including under the weather:
In the Philadelphia Gazette of last evening, the Board of Health have found a champion who enters into their quarrel with great spirit [...] And as to this salt water Quixotte, if instead of playing off his Billingsgate artillery, he had slack’d sail a bit, and taken a correct observation before he run out all his canvas, he might have discovered that he was going out of his course—That in running foul of the Aurora’s hawser, he must bring himself up, in such a lubber-like fashion, as to expose him to a raking fore and aft. But as he may have been half sea over, when he made sail, or mayhap been under the weather for some time, he may without any great sin for a sailor, be excused for being so kind hearted as to suppose that his sea lingo was the least return he ought to make for his release from quarantine.
The sense of being ill is in place by 1815. This passage from an article in Kentucky’s Western Monitor of 31 March of that year uses it in reference to the economy of New England, which had stagnated under the British blockade during the War of 1812, but which was recovering now the war was over:
The whole machinery of commerce is ere this in that country repaired, and in no long time the rust it had contracted will be worn off, and its usefulness and beauty be totally restored. On such a restoration the liberal spirit of Kentucky would dwell with pleasure even if she herself were not to be benefitted. To this pleasure may be added the satisfaction such as a brother feels when by a sudden turn of things, a brother, who had been under the weather, rises into usefulness and independence, able to stand of himself, and to impart as well as receive assistance.
It's often the case that claimed nautical origins for English words and idioms turn out to be false, but this is one case where those who claim a nautical origin are correct.
Sources:
“Communicated.” Western Monitor (Lexington, Kentucky), 31 March 1815, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“London, Jan. 10.” The Daily Advertiser (New York), 27 April 1786, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Lubbers Ahoi!” Aurora (Philadelphia), 17 June 1803, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. weather, n, under, prep.
Smith, John. An Accidence or The Path-Way to Experience Necessary for All Young Sea-Men. London: Jonas Man and Benjamin Fisher, 1627, 28–29. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
———. A Sea Grammar. London: John Haviland, 1627, 40. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Nicolas Cammillieri, early nineteenth century. Public domain image.