Dictionary

sea legs en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) The ability, when walking aboard a ship, to anticipate the motion of the deck so as to walk steadily without losing balance.
   • to get/find one's sea legs
   • Jasper would find his sea-legs in a fortnight, and a twelvemonth's v'y'ge would make him a man. 1840, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter XII, in The Pathfinder: Or, The Inland Sea. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC:
   • Had a refreshing walk up and down the quarter-deck, though I have hardly found my sea-legs yet. 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement:
   • […] and hear poor Mr Tapley, in his wandering fancy, playing at skittles in the Dragon, making love-remonstrances to Mrs Lupin, getting his sea-legs on board the Screw, travelling with old Tom Pinch on English roads, and burning stumps of trees in Eden, all at once. 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 33, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:
   • It was fortunate for the passengers that most of them had at this period of the voyage got their sea legs; otherwise walking on the slippery deck, that seemed to heave as the rolling of the vessel threw its slopes up or down, would have been impossible. 1905, Bram Stoker, The Man:
   • Our passengers hailed from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. 1869, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter II, in The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company. […], →OCLC:
2. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) The ability to travel by ship without becoming seasick.
   • When the ship was pitching or rolling, work would be difficult; but even then, when the Colonists get their sea-legs, and are free from the qualmishness which overtakes landsmen when first getting afloat, I cannot see why they should not engage in some form of industrial work far more profitable than yawning and lounging about the deck, to say nothing of the fact that by so doing they would lighten the expense of their transit. 1890, William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out:
3. (US, plural, plural-only, rare) Synonym of crab sticks.
4. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) The ability to partially or fully inhabit a marine environment.
   • So, from the Jurassic Period to today, the problems that come with being secondarily aquatic seem to have had the same kinds of solutions. And what we've learned is that it's no easy task to get your sea legs. But once you do, it's smooth sailing. 2021, PBS Eons: When Crocs Thrived in the Seas:

Forms

Relateds

VR legs · land legs

Synonyms

crab sticks

Translations (5)

nn sjøbein (ability to walk steadily aboard) · nb sjøbein (ability to walk steadily aboard) · fr pied marin (ability to walk steadily aboard) · fi merijalat (ability to walk steadily aboard) · pl dobre samopoczucie na statku (ability not to become seasick)