184 - Expression: Three Sheets To The Wind
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Hi, everybody. My name is Shauna, and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it. Hey, guys. Hope you're having a nice day.

In today's lesson, we're going to go over the English expression three sheets to the wind. As usual, we'll go through the expression's origin, or the etymology, to find out where it came from. Then you'll hear three stories using the expression, so you get an idea of how you can use it in various different contexts.

But just a heads up, if you do not like hearing about alcohol, then I highly suggest skipping this episode. I very rarely talk about alcohol on this podcast, but it's the nature of part one and part two of episode 184. In part two, which will be posted next week, we'll be talking about wine regions in the United States.

There are quite a few wine regions, but I'll focus on just a few. I want to give you an idea of what it's like to visit them, what it looks like, what the vibe is, what kinds of grapes and wines you can get in those specific regions.

And also, I would like to share how to order wine based on your tastes in English. So it's going to be a really fantastic episode. I learned a lot about the history of wine growing in the United States while doing it. And believe me, you can't miss it. Stay tuned for part two.

Before we begin today's episode, I would like to share a few messages that I received from premium subscribers. The first is from Takako, I think I'm pronouncing that right, who is from an island near Japan. She listened to episode 182 with Tanya about Nebraska, and she left this message.

Hi Shauna, I truly enjoyed this episode. Tanya's story brings back fond memories from my childhood, where I would spend time with my cousins out in the countryside. We would play outside in the field, catching tadpoles, tiny fish, and other insects in a brooklet. We would get to swim in an irrigation pool as well, so just like Tanya.

My parents would grow sugar cane so my siblings and I would help them harvest. My grandpa once dressed a chicken, but I didn't see it because it was frightening. We learned from Tanya that dressing a chicken is preparing it to be eaten. We also had powdered juice like Kool-Aid, and I sometimes sucked up the powder with a straw.

It felt decadent as a child. We mentioned in that episode that Kool-Aid came from Nebraska. It is a powdered substance and you add water to it and sugar and it becomes a drink.

Takako, I can relate to you also. As a kid, we used to have pixie sticks, which were sort of like powdered, flavored sugar in tubes. They sort of looked like straws and we would suck them up. And it also felt very extravagant. Or as she said, decadent. I love that. And so she said, thank you so much for the fun episode.

You're welcome. I'm so glad that it brought back so many memories for you in such a different part of the world. I mean, that's probably the complete opposite side of the world, being from an island near Japan.

Next, we had a response from Mia, who is from China. And it was after listening to episode 178 about the expression, go big or go home. She wrote that the episode came at a time that she really needed to hear it.

After the pandemic ended, she got a job just to pay the bills and that she put her dream job on hold. She said that, quote, In China, we have an idiom.

boiling frog, which means that a person or thing is in a gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril. This year, I'm going to get my CTCSOL, gotta love those acronyms, Certificate for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages certificate

I really hope I can teach students all over the world like you or perhaps even leave this country to explore the world while teaching. Go big or go home, right? Thank you so much for sharing this. First of all, I want to say I hear you. It's so easy to fall into the comfort of a steady job.

especially after such a difficult time like the pandemic. But the fact that you're recognizing this and actively moving towards your goal, that's huge. I love that in Chinese you have the expression boiling frog.

It's such a powerful image. I think you can imagine a frog boiling in water and the situation continually getting worse as your dreams slip away. But I love that you're going for your C-T-C-S-O-L. Teaching is a great career. So go big or go home. You use this correctly in context. Let's go ahead and begin today's episode with a joke.

Are you ready? Why did the wind get promoted? Do you know? Because it had a lot of gusto. Oh, that's so punny. There is some wordplay here. First of all, you have to understand the first part. What does it mean to get promoted? When you are promoted, you move up in rank at your job.

Maybe you're a cashier at a grocery store and then you become a store manager. You have been promoted. You might also get a raise when you're promoted. A raise is an increase in salary. So why did the wind get promoted? Because it had a lot of gusto. The word gusto means enthusiasm.

that young actor has gusto. In other words, he's very enthusiastic. Gusto sounds like gust, which is where the wordplay comes in. A gust is a sudden burst of air or wind. During the storm, a gust blew my hat away. A lot of times we say a gust of wind,

but it's kind of redundant. It's a bit repetitive. We know that a gust is wind. Let's repeat the joke. Why did the wind get promoted? Because it had a lot of gusto, right? So the wind got promoted because of its powerful bursts, making it both literal, wind-related, and figurative, enthusiastic, or energetic.

Let's move on to the expression of the day, which is three sheets to the wind. We'll begin with the individual word definitions. Three is a number. One, two, three. Sheets, well, a sheet, you can have sheets of paper. But a lot of times when we say sheets, we're talking about large rectangular pieces of cloth.

So on your bed, you might have bed sheets. I washed all the sheets and hung them out to dry on the clothesline. To is a preposition and it expresses a direction. The is a definite article. And wind, right, because the expression is three sheets to the wind. Wind, as you know, is moving air caused by natural forces.

You could see the trees blowing in the wind. A gust of wind came and blew my hat off. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's be honest, life gets stressful. Between work, family, and everything in between, it's easy to put your mental health on the back burner. But here's the thing. Taking care of your mind is just as important as taking care of your body.

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your well-being is worth it. Visit BetterHelp.com slash American English today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash American English. So three sheets to the wind is an idiom, and it means to be very drunk or intoxicated.

Oh no, he had too much tequila. He is three sheets to the wind. Now this expression dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when sailors commonly used it to describe someone who was very drunk, as it's used today. And it comes from sailing vocabulary. A sheet in sailing refers to the rope used to control the sails.

The sail looks like a sheet, but apparently it describes the ropes. So if one sheet is loose, the ship will be off balance. It cannot move smoothly. If all three sheets are flapping in the wind, the ship will become completely unsteady.

A person who is three sheets to the wind is also unsteady. They might have a hard time walking in a straight line. They might stumble. In other words, they might trip over their own feet or maybe over something else that's in their way. Just like those loose ropes on the ship, those sheets, they are unstable. So in my head,

I have a hard time imagining ropes as sheets. I'm not a sailor. However, sails do look like sheets. So if your memory works better when you have strong visuals, then imagine those sheets moving all over the place. Three sheets in the wind. And yeah, of course, if they're going in all different directions, that boat will look like it's drunk. It's pretty easy to use this expression, in my opinion,

Because in a lot of situations, there's always that drunk person, right? If you go wine tasting, if you go to a college party, bachelor and bachelorette parties, wedding receptions,

Without fail, at any of these events where there's free-flowing alcohol, there's always that one person who is three sheets to the wind. We might also say, if you want to use some slang, that they're plastered, that they're wasted. In English, we have way too many ways to say that somebody drank too much. Let's go through three examples.

Number one will take place at a wedding reception. A reception is the party that takes place after a wedding. Now, let's imagine the groom, the man who got married, is named James.

At James's reception, he had too much to drink. He was three sheets to the wind. He was laughing loudly at jokes that weren't funny and stumbling over chairs. How much had he drunk? Well, the evening started with one glass of champagne. But as the night progressed, he couldn't say no to the endless toasts.

People raised their glasses and said, to the bride and groom. He, of course, drank with them. By the time the cake was served, James was slurring his words. To slur means to speak incoherently. To slur means to speak incoherently, right? So to speak with all of your words connected. James was slurring his words and he was hugging guests he hadn't met.

By the end of the night, his new bride was furious. She yelled at him, control yourself. You're wasted. You're three sheets to the wind. In other words, you drank too much. Get a hold of yourself, man. Number two, we covered the wedding reception. Let's move on to a bachelorette party.

Maria rarely drinks, but at her sister's bachelorette party, she ended up three sheets to the wind after one too many cocktails. The night had started with dinner, where she cautiously sipped a margarita. To sip means to drink slowly in small amounts. But the real trouble began during the karaoke bar crawl.

When you go on a bar crawl, you move from one bar to the next. So she went to a karaoke bar. Every time someone sang a classic 80s hit, Maria was handed another shot, and she was too excited to refuse. By the end of the night, she was dancing barefoot and giving heartfelt speeches to her sister about sisterhood and love.

The next morning, Maria woke up with a pounding headache, a few blurry photos on her phone, and no recollection of how she got to her hotel. She had blacked out. To black out is when you forget everything.

Last night, she'd been three sheets to the wind. She'd been inebriated, intoxicated. She was as drunk as a skunk. That's a hilarious way to say it, by the way. He's as drunk as a skunk. Super common also. And yes, so she was three sheets to the wind. And then she had a hangover. Number three.

So at Christmas time in the United States, it's very common for companies to have Christmas parties. And they're notorious for being wild with lots of drinking. It's not always the case, but you've probably seen this on TV shows like The Office or Friends. Here's another example.

When I saw Steve stumble out of the office, I knew he was three sheets to the wind. He was wasted. What I didn't know was what went down at the annual Christmas party. In other words, I didn't know what had happened. What went down? Steve had been accepting drinks at the open bar all night, and his colleagues had been cheering him on.

When it was time to give speeches, he grabbed the microphone and started giggling uncontrollably.

And so while giggling, he was mispronouncing colleagues' names and companies that they collaborated with. The speech was an absolute mess. So messy that people were talking about it for weeks afterwards. The night that Steve was three sheets to the wind. So maybe Steve was slurring his words. Maybe he was stumbling.

A lot of the behaviors that occur when someone is three sheets to the wind are universal, right? To slur, to stumble, to giggle. What else did I say? To have a hangover, to black out, things like that. This past weekend, we went on a little adventure to Charlotte. And while we were walking, we passed by a tattoo parlor.

with a sign on the door that read, we have the right to refuse service to anyone who is not in the right state. All I could think was, I wonder how many people come in to get tattoos when they're three sheets to the wind. Like when people drink way too much, they're plastered, they're wasted, and they're like, oh, I think it's a great idea to get a tattoo on my lower back.

Now, what do you think? Do you think it happens often? It reminded me of an episode of How I Met Your Mother when Ted drunkenly went into a shop and came home with a butterfly tattoo on his lower back. Yeah, that was a bad decision.

Anyway, let's go through the pronunciation exercise. We'll start with the statement, I don't know what he drank, but he's three sheets to the wind. Repeat after me. I don't know. I don't know what he drank. I don't know what he drank, but he's... I don't know what he drank, but he's three sheets to the wind.

I don't know, of course, turns to I don't know, I don't know, I don't know in its reduced form, right? It's a reduction. I don't know. I don't know.

And if you were to spell that in a text message, you would write D-U-N-N-O, D-U-N-N-O, D-U-N-N-O, which means don't know. But I really would not write that in anything else. Not unless it's a very good friend. It's a little bit informal, in my opinion, for any sort of work, emails, or anything like that. So reserve that for text messaging. And once you've done that,

more so with friends and family than with anybody that you need to make a good impression on. All right, and the conjugation. I've never been three sheets to the wind. You've never been three sheets to the wind. He's never been three sheets to the wind. She's never been three sheets to the wind. It's never been three sheets to the wind.

We've never been three sheets to the wind. They've never been three sheets to the wind. That's it for the pronunciation. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Be sure to stay tuned until next week when we'll be discussing wine regions in the United States.

history of wine in the U.S. and, of course, how to order wine based on your preferences. If you would like the PDF transcript for this episode, the quiz, flashcards, and all of the other bonus material for Season 4, be sure to check out the link in the episode notes. Until next week, bye!

Thanks and hope to see you soon.

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