Among last time’s guff about metaphors and their relationship to reality, I confidently stated that the phrase ‘toeing the line’ came from lining up on the running track to start a sprint. Seems yet again I was wrong! Hard to believe, I know.

Actually, it comes from our language’s deep and rich roots in Britain as a maritime nation — by which I mean its tradition of sending many ships of various kinds to all corners of the earth, employing significant numbers of people and driving the growth of its colonial empire, all of which has laid a rich store of nautical phrases deep within the language.

So toeing the line comes from the tradition of mustering the crew of Her Majesty’s ships every morning, presumably to ensure all were present and correct, sober and ready to pursue the business of keeping everything shipshape. And when this crew gathered, they would assemble with their feet aligned with a seam of the deck, where the planks joined. Imagine all those gnarled, horny, bare feet, hairy toes and all, thus arranged — toeing the line.

Did you know that the metaphor “between the devil and the deep blue sea” has a more prosaic origin than its diabolical cast list implies? In this case, the devil is not Lucifer, old Harry himself, Satan if you will — ‘the devil’ is the seam between a wooden ship’s deck and hull planking, where complex curves meet square edges. It was extremely difficult to seal with hot pitch — the devil of a job. If you find yourself situated between this edge of the deck and the sea below, it’s a hazardous, untenable place to be — a predicament involving choosing between two undesirable alternatives. A rock and a hard place, if you like.

Similarly, ‘the bitter end’ comes from the many ropes required to manage these vessels. The ‘bitter’ or ‘bitts’ on a ship were wooden posts embedded through the deck or gunwales, serving as oversized cleats for securing mooring or towing ropes. The bitter end was the part of the line fastened to the bitter for a strong purchase. So when we talk about the bitter end, it’s the very, very, final end of the rope.

But let us acknowledge that since the Empire is history and ships no longer comprise wood and rope and canvas, these tropes have become unmoored (see?) from their origins. 

Take for example the idea of changing tack. Yes, we know what this means — an alteration of one’s direction, but also of intent. Tacking a sailing vessel is no small task, involving the resetting of sails by hauling in or letting out various ropes, redistributing crew dispositions, recalculating course. It’s a significant decision. It’s only done for good reason. That’s what makes this an effective metaphor — it retains that sense of a significant alteration of planned progress, with a tinge of the irreversible.

And that’s why we still use the phrase — it works and is evocative. Yet it’s starting to change: you may now hear it expressed as a “change of tact”.  We still know what it means, but saying it this way indicates a less physical change — perhaps one of intent or rhetoric. So the phrase survives in an altered state: language evolves under the pressure of change, and bits of it that no longer suit our purpose will fall out of use. 

Once you start plumbing these depths, this nautical vocab starts heaving into view everywhere. Think about ‘taking soundings’; ‘at loggerheads’; ‘cut of your jib’;  ‘on an even keel’; ‘taken aback’; ‘flotsam and jetsam’; ‘loose cannon’; ‘keel over’; ‘know the ropes’; ‘plain sailing’; and ‘batten down the hatches’. You don’t have to know the ancient nautical origins of them to relish their ability to give our language a whole raft of expressive options.

One of the phrases that we still use a lot, probably without knowing its origins, is ‘under way’. You know, “the project is now under way” — it is in progress, it has been started up (launched and on its plotted course, if you will). But it’s a particular bugaboo of your author that we have become confused as to whether this is one or two words. Trivial? Sure — it doesn’t change the meaning if you go for the single-word or double-word solution and it’s certainly a useful term, judging by how often it’s used.

But, thing is, once you know the origin of the term, you can’t but insist that it’s two words. I’ve had actual arguments about this. Once, in my guise as an effete PR executive, I jokingly told a journalist that, much as I loved the article she’d written about a product we had launched, the headline should be corrected from ‘underway’ to ‘under way’. She, Cambridge-educated and more wedded to her deathless prose than I had anticipated, responded in a decidedly prickly manner. I’m not sure the relationship ever got back on course.

And, though I’m not proud of this, I once went through a whole bunch of Wikipedia articles about ships, correcting the use of ‘underway’ wherever it occurred. As one does. This prompted a surprisingly aggressive notice from a moderator warning me to cease and desist as the two-word usage was absolutely OK in Wikipedia’s book. Ah well, you try to be helpful . . ..

It’s these times when it’s important to pick which hills to die on, and that level of pedantry is pretty sad, anyway, so I’m big enough to concede that Wikipedia can persist in its folly unmolested.

Anyway, just so we’re clear about how absolutely right I was/am, here’s my reasoning. The noun “way” denotes a path or direction — the route a ship follows while in motion. It also sees usage as denoting ‘momentum’ or progress, as in, “the way slowly came off her as the sails were furled.” The preposition “under” indicates the condition of moving along this “way” or path. It’s not an adjective like ‘underweight’ or ‘overtired’ — although perhaps that’s where the misunderstanding comes from.

I rest my case, QED, and easy-peasy lemon-squeezie. And, just to leave us all with something to reflect on, while I speak of this rich nautical phraseology as something anchored in the past, there’s always a chance some of it at least will come back. With the best and brightest scientists regularly demonstrating that emissions from internal combustion engines are causing the atmosphere and oceans to heat up, with alarming consequences, there is a chance that we will soon see a return to sail-powered ships.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the sun’s over the yardarm and I’m off to splice the mainbrace. Cheers!