Rex Trulove
When a person is sick, they are said to be under the weather. You might wonder what weather might have to do with being sick and where this phrase came from.
This is another phrase that comes from sailing ships. During a storm at sea, a ship sways and pitches because of the increased wave activity. It is pretty common for people to become seasick, because of the storms. It is also quite common for people who are seasick to go below decks. They are getting out of and away from the weather, but this isn’t the reason they go below deck.
The deck of a ship pitches and sways greatly in a storm. The lower in the ship a person gets, the less the amount of pitching and swaying that is felt. Since it is the motion that causes seasickness, continued motion simply makes matters worse. Therefore, it makes sense that the best place to be when you are seasick is as deep in the bowels of the ship as you can get.
Thus, a seasick person gets as far under the weather as possible. That is the connection and it is the reason we say that if a person is sick, especially if they are laying down to get over the illness, that they are under the weather.
