FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS...What the Heck Does That even Mean?

<Flashback Friday…someone used a phrase the other day that I’d heard very often throughout my thirty years as a military spouse, but rarely hear in the civilian world. And when I heard it, I tried to remember what it meant. No luck. (This getting older thing is no joke!) Thank goodness I wrote this blog a decade ago that I could quickly refresh my memory. And I thought maybe some of my blog visitors would be interested to have their memories refreshed, or maybe learn something new. So here is a repeat post from April 2, 2012.>>

 At a recent Hail and Farewell (a party wherein new reports to the command are welcomed and those departing are bid a fond adieu), the Lieutenant heading off to Norfolk was offered the traditional wishes of “Fair winds and following seas.”  Since I’ve been around the Navy world for almost 30 years, I’ve heard this phrase uttered hundreds, if not thousands, of times.  But (and this may be a sign of maturity on my part) this time it got me to wondering what exactly it meant.  So I let my fingers do the surfing through the cyber world, and I thought I’d save y’all from duplicating my efforts and today seems a good opportunity to share my newly acquired knowledge.

Beach Tale: Idioms with Nautical Origins

          Have you ever heard the phrase, “Not enough room to swing a cat?”  Don’t ask me why, but my mom used to say it a lot.  And since it’s a universal truth that as we sound more like our mothers as we age, I muttered it the other day when complaining about how cluttered the basement had become. 

My son asked, “What does that mean?”

I explained my childhood interpretation of the phrase, where you grab a cat (I envisioned our seal point Siamese, Punchy) by the tail and swing it around the room, knocking over lamps and pictures and whatever other knickknacks are within the cat’s circumference.    

“That’s crazy,” my son said.

So in my effort to prove myself right, I did a Google search.  Guess what?  (And I’m admitting this publicly here…) I was wrong.  And to further my surprise, I learned the phrase had a nautical origin.  Additional research showed a lot of common terms have ties to Navy traditions.  Here are a few, gleaned from Traditions of the Navy by Cedric W. Windas, copyright 1942: