I was shelving some books the other day and opened up a couple of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels. Late in his life, the Irish author gained a great following for what is in effect a 20 volume novel that traces the careers and adventures of a ship's captain and a surgeon in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. Two of the novels were condensed into a movie, "Master and Commander," starring Russell Crowe.

The books are wonderful in their own right, but what I started thinking about how our English cousins, living close to the sea and dependent on control of the oceans for their prosperity and protections, have bequeathed us with a rich trove of words that we use nowadays without recognizing their salty origins.

For example, consider some paired terms, like "headway" and "leeway." To make headway is to sail into the wind, and in a time before the steam engine, to make headway meant to sail across the wind at an angle, then turn and tack in the other direction, eventually making progress in the direction from which the wind is blowing. So expressions such as "we're making some headway on this project" hearken back to the tedious labor of beating into the wind.

On the other hand, we find ourselves saying, "we need to give him some leeway." The lee is the downwind side. Sailing ships were constantly being pushed to the lee, and it took careful control to avoid being blown to leeward. Especially in crowded harbors, it became important for other craft to give leeway to sailing ships, lest they find themselves drifting into collisions. Nothing so frightened sailors in the age of sail than a strong gale and a lee shore upon which the ship could be driven. It is important to have enough leeway, then and now.

Another interesting paired term is "by and large." The idiom seems to have lost most of its meaning today, except as a mild qualifier for a judgment. The phrase survives in such constructions as "by and large, I think she's the best candidate." The phrase is synonymous with "overall" or "considering all the facts."

In square-rigged sailing ships, to sail "large" is to sail with the wind at the stern, to go the way the wind blows. When sailing large, a ship would put on as much sail as was safe under the circumstances and would typically try to maximize her speed. She could be sighted more easily by lookouts, friend and foe alike, because of the large mass of canvas she deployed.

In sailing "by," on the other hand, a ship was trying to go into the wind. The sails would be rigged fore and aft, that is, lengthwise. Some ships were better built to sail into the wind, and in naval combat in particular, it was a decisive tactical advantage. But all ships had to sail into the wind from time to time.

The expression "by and large," then, means "under all circumstances." Ship crews would eventually go everywhere, by and large.

I find these word stories fascinating. Next time you ask someone to give you some leeway, or you and your co-workers are trying to make some headway on a difficult task, take just a second to sniff the salt spray on the rigging of those common expressions that have come down to us over the centuries. We use lots of other expressions whose origins are almost lost to us. But by and large, words carry more freight than we know.

Frank Thomas Pool is a poet and English teacher working in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in South Longview and graduated from Longview High School. E-mail: FrankT.Pool@gmail.com