If you were on a ship in the early 1800s, you might notice that the three corners of each sail were bound down with ropes. These ropes were called "sheets," and they served to keep the ship steady in the wind. When the sheets came loose, the vessel would zig-zag to and fro, meandering around the sea like a drunken sailor.

In fact, around 1821 people realized that this might be the best possible way to describe drunken sailors—or drunken anyone, for that matter. It was like they were "three sheets in the wind." (Similarly, "two sheets in the wind" was for someone who was a little bit less drunk, and "a sheet or so" meant they were just tipsy.)

The above comes from the delightful new book Words in Time and Place by language expert David Crystal. In it, he traces the history of synonyms for many common words, including, gloriously, those of "drunk."

The grandfather of "drunk," "fordrunken," is a Middle English word that appears in Chaucer's tales. From there, though, the way we started to describe drunk people became much more entertaining—and head-scratching. Here are a few highlights from Crystal's far more extensive list:

1564: Tippled—For tippler, the name for a tavern-keeper