under the weather
- 1Ill or low in spirits, especially with a cold or flu.
She sounded under the weather on the phone, so we moved the meeting.
Half the office was under the weather by the end of January.
Similarill, sick, unwell, poorly, ailing
Oppositewell, healthy, fine, fit
Note
The phrase came ashore from the sea. It is cut down from under the weather bow, the side of a ship that takes the bad weather, where being under it meant being battered by storms or seasick. On land it settled into everyday malaise. It does not take more or most, and the cause follows with from: under the weather from malaria, from a cold.
- 2Mildly drunk, or ill the next day from the effects of heavy drinking.
By the third toast the best man was distinctly under the weather.
He turned up to the interview under the weather and smelling of last night.
Similartipsy, drunk, hungover, merry, tight
Oppositesober
Note
Here the language of illness does polite duty for drink, letting a speaker admit the effects without naming the cause. Louis Joseph Vance's The Brass Bowl (1907) shows the dodge at work: 'a bit under the weather last night,' followed at once by 'a bit more than we could carry.' Only context separates it from the ordinary sense of feeling ill: which is exactly what the speaker is counting on.
- 3Experiencing adversity, especially financial trouble.
The Hawkinses were under the weather just then, their land worth millions only on paper.
The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is millions when it comes into market.
1873, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens]; Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded AgeNote
The phrase once reached past the body to a person's fortunes, and that use is now obsolete. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, writing in 1873, set the Hawkinses' trouble against the Tennessee property that will be worth millions when it comes to market: under the weather now, rich on paper. Modern readers hear the illness meaning first, so read misfortune into the phrase only in older prose, and keep it for health in your own writing.
Practice
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Origin
From the phrase "under the weather bow," meaning affected by bad weather or seasick. "Weather bow" is a nautical term for the side of a ship exposed to bad weather.