Under the weather

Thank goodness that the weekend before last I was fully fit and raring to go, raring to go to three Mavericks concerts, meet lots of friends, stay over in Manchester with my one of my oldest friend and generally gallop around the country… Thank goodness, because since last Thursday I have had a dreadful cold/cough/yuk/poorly/sore throat/rubbish sort of being under the weather.

Under the weather, I wondered what the origin of the phrase is, and it seems that it is most likely a naval term. When  a sailor was ill, he was sent below decks, so he was literally under the weather and not out in it…. However wouldn’t the phrase be something like below decks, ‘I’m feeling a bit below decks’? Another suggestion, again from sea-faring, is that in bad weather you were more like to feel ill, especially on the side or bow of the ship that the bad weather was coming from, and the original phrase was ‘under the weather bow’. It then came to mean not just feeling physically ill, but feeling a bit out of sorts, or gloomy… which you would on a ship in bad weather in the olden days!

Here comes the rain…

http://http://youtu.be/iH2Wv_eaKzM