September 06 2010
Ahoy All Ye Maties!
Coming home with a wet sail…..
You may have heard the phrase on Letters & Numbers – or across the first week of finals in the AFL. Sports callers love it. Good teams do it. And good yachts too, no doubt.
By my reckoning, the phrase means ‘to finish a contest strongly, in particular from a trailing position, looming as a possible late winner’.
Do we agree with the definition? Feel free to adjust. But please with salt on top, who can tell from where the phrase originates?
Theories abound like seagulls on a chip. One quiz viewer suggests that sailors deliberately wet their sails to give them a telling weight advantage in strong wind. Another nautical fan: to race so close to the wind that your vessel dips into the water. While a third theory says that if your sails hit the water, you’ve naturally struck a setback. Therefore, to come home with a wet sail is to recover from this misfortune.
I’m at sea, people. Are all these yarns good? None good? Some good? Please, if any matey with brine in the blood could be so kind….
Comments
PRS — 06 September at 11:40PM
The following excerpted quote from
http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/pubs/ozwords/June2002/Mailbag.html
sheds some light.
"The OED explains the origin of the term in its definition: ‘to come with a wet sail: to make swift progress to victory, like a ship with sails wetted in order to keep close to the wind.’ The OED provides two citations, one from a coursing context (i.e. the pursuit of game by hounds, especially greyhounds) and the other from a team sport: ‘1876 Coursing Calendar 326: Westeria, coming with a wet sail, rushed by and ultimately killed; 1901 Daily Express 18 Mar. 8/1: Bury, who was expected to come with a wet sail, went down before their local rivals at Bolton’. "
This is the exact opposite of what I'd always understood - a wet sail provides a weight and wield disadvantage, so successfully coming home this way was to overcome the odds (like DA's last example) - but seems not so. Or is this just a case of time and/or ignorance perverting the meaning?
So, yes, I vote for the present-day meaning as DA defines it.
DA — 07 September at 07:07AM
Thanks PRS. And since posting a viewer contacted SBS with a very seaworthy theory - the tea clippers of the East Indies would race home to Europe, with sail-wetting a ploy to 'grab' more wind.
(Never put your tea-crates in one hold, but that explanation sounds highly likely.)
Peter Biddlecombe — 07 September at 09:11PM
The OED definition (found under "wet") confirms the maritime idea for the original meaning: "to make swift progress to victory, like a ship with sails wetted in order to keep close to the wind."
The uses I can find for "came with a wet sail" seem to be old-fashioned sporting language (I don't remember seeing or hearing this phrase in sports coverage in the UK), so it seems at least possible that the different phrase "come home with a wet sail" has an entirely separate history which the OED doesn't (as far as I can tell) record - it certainly seems more Australian than "come with a wet sail", looking at the URLs of Google hits for "with a wet sail".
DA — 08 September at 06:26AM
That's interesting, Peter. Appreciate the Interpol aspect to the investigation.
On that score, would an English person know what a ranga might be?
Peter Biddlecombe — 08 September at 09:07AM
Not this English person, until Google and the OED found me ("high-born Maori") (OED) and "redhead" in less formal places. It's not in Chambers, or Oxford's one-volume offering (just revised) so I don't think it's just me.
DA — 08 September at 10:34PM
That's fascinating, Peter, thankyou. In fact the ranga as redhead (via orangutan) is allegedly an Australian coining, which your legwork goes towards firming. Appreciate the Albion reportage.
Haven't heard of the Maori meaning, which seems noble in comparison.