Meaning
The ability to keep one's balance and walk steadily on a moving vessel, and by extension the capacity to adjust to a new, unfamiliar, or unstable situation. Almost always spoken of as something you get or find: a new sailor gets their sea legs in the first days aboard, and figuratively a newcomer finds their sea legs in a strange job or city. Informal and friendly in tone; nearly always paired with get, find, or have. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A term from the age of sail describing a sailor's learned ability to anticipate the pitch and roll of the deck and move confidently where newcomers stagger or succumb to seasickness. Dictionary dating puts the noun in the early eighteenth century: Random House records it from 1705-15, with one idiom reference giving 1712 for the nautical sense. Established literary citations follow in Cooper's The Pathfinder (1840) and Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), both already using the joking formula of getting or finding one's sea legs. The extension to any new situation - a job, a course, a routine - had developed by the late nineteenth century and is now the dominant everyday use, so the nautical sense has become the metaphor rather than the norm.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- find one's sea legs
- get one's sea legs
- have one's sea legs
Usage Examples
- Give her a week on the crew and she'll have her sea legs.
- It took the new recruits a month to find their sea legs in the control room.
- Once I got my sea legs on the night shift, the hours stopped bothering me.