A term describe someone who is extremely drunk. This phrase has its origin in 19th century nautical slang, the earliest form of the phrase being ‘three sheets in the wind’. The sheets aren’t sails as might be expected, but ropes fixed to the clews at the lower corners of sails to hold them in place and control the setting of a sail in relation to the direction of the wind. The sheet is often passed through a tackle before being attach to fixed points on the deck. If one of these sheets were to become loose, or break off altogether, the sheets are then said to be ‘to the wind’. If three sheets were to become loose and were blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the vessel will lurch about like an unsteady drunk person. Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness: three sheets was inebriated, whereas tipsy was just ‘one sheet in the wind’, or ‘a sheet in the wind’s eye’.