under the weather

under the weather

English

WOTD – 18 May 2017

Etymology

From under the weather bow (“affected by bad weather; seasick”); weather bow is a nautical term referring to the side of a ship exposed to bad weather.[1]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʌndə ðə ˈwɛðə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʌndɚ ðə ˈwɛðɚ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: un‧der the wea‧ther

Adjective

under the weather (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) ill or gloomy, especially from a cold or flu.
   • 1907 May, Andy Adams, “The School of Experience”, in Reed Anthony, Cowman: An Autobiography, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, OCLC 639666, page 151:

     […] I met a stranger, a quiet little man, who also had been under the weather from malaria.

2. (idiomatic) Somewhat intoxicated or suffering from a hangover.
   • 1907, Louis Joseph Vance, The Brass Bowl, New York, N.Y.: A. L. Burt Company, publishers, OCLC 6023266, pages 128–129:

     I was a bit under the weather last night: out with a party of friends, you know. Dare say we all had a bit more than we could carry.

3. (idiomatic, obsolete) Experiencing adversity.
   • 1873, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens]; Charles Dudley Warner, chapter XIX, in The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; Chicago, Ill.: F. G. Gilman, →OCLC; republished Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 1874, →OCLC, page 178:

     The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is millions when it comes into market.

Synonyms

• (somewhat ill or gloomy): off one's feed, out of sorts
• (somewhat intoxicated): out of sorts
• (experiencing adversity): out of sorts

Translations

somewhat ill

Catalan: no estar fi m, no estar fina f Finnish: huonovointinen (fi) French: ne pas être dans son assiette (fr) (verb) Galician: indisposto m German: angeschlagen (de), niedergeschlagen (de), bedrückt (de), angegriffen (de) Icelandic: veikur (is), slappur (is) m Irish: meath-thinn Italian: indisposto (it), fuori fase (it), sofferente (it) Maori: ngātoro Norwegian: hanglete, halvsjuk, halvsyk, klein (no), skranten, skrantete, tufs, tufsen, tufsete, uggen, urven Russian: не по себе́ (ru) (ne po sebé), нездоро́вый (ru) (nezdoróvyj), приболе́вший (ru) (pribolévšij) Slovak: necítiť sa vo svojej koži Spanish: indispuesto (es), (colloquial) pachucho (es) Swedish: krasslig (sv), risig (sv), vissen (sv), småsjuk

References

1. Bill Beavis; Richard G. McCloskey (1983) Salty Dog Talk: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions, London; New York, N.Y.: Granada, →ISBN.

Further reading

• “weather”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
• “weather”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, retrieved 22 February 2017, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.