A major coastal storm, like Sandy, which was a hurricane wrapped in a northeasterly gale that came ashore on a spring tide at high water along a 600-mile length of the Atlantic coastline, temporarily reminds us of the power of Mother Nature to interrupt our orderly lives. Mariners, like those aboard the Bounty, which went down during Sandy with the apparent loss of two lives, deal with the sea’s many moods all the time. As a result, throughout our long seafaring history, we have developed a large stock of expressions, which continue to enliven our language today. So let’s try to fathom out a few of them.

So beginning there, a fathom is a nautical measurement, originally based on the length of a mariner’s outstretched arms, and still used as a unit of measurement on a line to determine the depth of water under a vessel. The term comes from an old English word for embrace—hence the outstretched arms—but now commonly suggests plumbing the full depth of a subject.

In deeper water, sailing full and by means a vessel’s sails are full, but the ship’s course is close to or “by” the wind, when everything is fine and proceeding in a relaxed manner, especially if on cat’s paws waves, which indicate fair weather. When a ship comes off (away from) the wind, her sails are full and she is sailing large. So a ship that handles well, both by and large, means she is handy in all situations. A large sail hoisted in fair weather at night on a downwind run is called a fly by night and requires little attention from the crew. Today, however, fly by night does not just denote a casual operation, but an unscrupulous and undependable one.

Even though we think of being on an even keel as a compliment today, when under sail this meant a dispiriting lack of wind. With no need to stand watches, which were organized by lists posted on deck, sailors became listless. No wind, no list. Today listless still means to be dull or without pep.

Mariners are wary of a falling glass or barometer, which signifies the approach of dirty weather, as does a sun dog, or mock sun, formed by ice crystals in high clouds that indicates the approach of a weather change. A sundog, however, is less threatening than a wind gall, which is a fragment or piece of a rainbow seen in a detached cloud that means you are in for a spate of windy weather. When the weather becomes truly squally, a ship will turn and run or scud with the wind under reduced sails or bare poles as she is carried furiously along by a tempest. Scudding is derived from the name of loose, vapory cloud fragments, hovering under rain clouds, now termed “fractostratus” by meteorologists.

If a ship is at anchor and the weather turns unexpectedly nasty, the captain might choose to cut and run, leaving his anchor behind on the bottom. The end of the anchor line, when it is all paid out, is called the bitter end, meaning the utmost extremity of an effort when there is nothing left. And never, ever let go the bitter end! In deteriorating conditions at sea, a captain might have to shorten sail in a hurry, not by reefing, but by scandalizing (from scantle—or make small) the sails, which involves raising the boom or lowering the top of a sail in an unconventional manner, usually considered a violation of propriety in a well ordered ship. Another term for disreputable sailing occurs when the bottom or foot of a sail is not properly secured from its boom or yard and is thus foot loose, which is not the same happy circumstance as to be fancy-free.

Discipline aboard British Naval ships was maintained by floggings, courtesy of a cat-o-nine tails, a leather whip with nine tips, usually kept in a bag. Thus, when the cat’s out of the bag, there is trouble ahead. Boys who went to sea at an early age were generally flogged by having to lean over a gun (cannon), and hence were over a barrel and whipped with a smaller cat, called a pussy. Hence, if you were not man enough to take a flogging from the Captain’s daughter, a sardonic term for the cat, you were a pussy.

Sailors were often flogged for riotous behavior after drinking more than their share of brandy, which was served to the crews on all royal ships, at least until the conquest of Jamaica in 1687, when cheaper rum was substituted on board. In the 1740s, whether for medical or morale reasons, Admiral Edward Vernon ordered the Navy to water down its daily rum rations. Because Vernon often wore a coat made from a coarse fabric of silk mixed with wool, called grogram, he was known as Old Grog, and his watery rum was called grog. When a sailor had more than his share to drink, usually on shore leave, he was groggy. When a sailor had drunk so much he fell down, he was three sheets to the wind, an apt metaphor that derives from the sight of a three masted ship with the lines controlling her three sails, called sheets, flapping furiously free, which meant the ship was out of control. Sailors who were merely tipsy were one sheet to the wind.

I have spent the past day and a half contemplating these mariner’s weather terms in New York, New York (the city so nice they named it twice). I remain stranded here because all the city’s transportation systems have shut down, since it was not possible to batten down the hatches—that is to secure wooden battens over the open hatches of the rapid transit system, which enabled the spumy seas to run amok below decks. This has taken the wind out of our sails, meaning we lack all maneuverability. Furthermore, the hotel is running out of food and may be reduced to serving us salt beef, suitable for long passages because it does not spoil. If so, we may end up chewing the fat for quite some time here, like sailors who often chewed a chunk for hours to make it edible. But when it is time to head “down” to Maine, you can be sure we will leave in a trice, that is, with a single pull, hence instantly.

Philip Conkling is president and founder of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.