In a way, being under the weather was basically the 19th-century version of being in your flop era. Two years later, an announcement about new leadership at the College of William & Mary acknowledged that although the “venerable institution has been long under the weather … we trust that a more auspicious era has commenced.”
Boston weather update#
An 1824 update from Key West ( called Thompson’s Island at the time) indicated that “piracy is completely under the weather” in the area. One article from 1826 even used the expression to mean “drunk.” And while it’s been suggested that the phrase first referred to illness and later expanded to encompass other difficulties, most early references involve those other difficulties.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Wikimedia Commons // No Known Restrictions on Publication “Everything is very low-priced here now, except real estate, which holds its own-a fact illustrative of the confidence which has always been felt by our citizens, that Boston could not long remain ‘under the weather,’” a Boston correspondent for New Orleans’s Times-Picayune wrote in 1843.Īn 1841 painting of Boston by Robert Havell. It was variously used in reference to personal financial troubles, a political party’s impotence, or an entire city’s failure to prosper. Moreover, many 19th-century instances of being under the weather have nothing to do with poor physical health. All Aboard the Struggle Bus (Or Boat)įirst of all, although a ship’s infirmary (or “ sick-bay”) would’ve been belowdecks-and passengers no doubt would’ve sheltered below during a storm-sources touting the aforementioned theories lack examples of the phrase under the weather in those contexts. An offshoot of that explanation claims that crewmen and passengers would go belowdecks during bad weather in order to forestall seasickness.īut there are a couple notable holes in this line of thinking. One popular theory posits that ailing sailors recuperated belowdecks, putting them literally under the weather decks (those exposed to the elements). While people generally agree that the idiom has nautical origins, it’s not entirely clear what those origins are. But that might not be the most welcome response when someone tells you they’re under the weather-meaning they don’t feel well. In one respect, we’re all pretty much always under the weather by default of living beneath the atmosphere.
0 kommentar(er)
