I can't remember a thread about sailing terms and traditions and definitions, etc., and people were starting to put things like this into another thread, so I thought I had better start a new one just for this purpose.

Here are a couple that were placed in another thread:

POSTED BY WOUTER:
How about "He is a loose cannon" ?

Comes from the old sailing battleships on which the mouth loaded cannons needed to be pulled back to relaod and than push forward out of their ports to fire. The cannons were on wheels therefor and kept in check by many ropes (ooops lines) and pully blocks. Sometime a cannon brok loose and the rolling of the ship in the waves would run the heavy cannon on wheels all around over the gundeck or just straight through the wood work on the otherside taking everything with it. Try to stop on of those ! Hence "loose cannon" = Big trouble
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POSTED BY JAKE:
Why male ear piercing of the left ear is cool and the right is not:

As I learned this morning from Tim Zimmermann's book "The Race", in the mid 1800's the world had just figured out that it made more sense to sail from Australia and China back to England (or to the eastern U.S.) by sailing the Southern Ocean in a route of circumnavigation. It became customary and dignified for sailors who had sailed around Cape Horn of South America to pierce the ear closest to the Cape as they blew past (and survived)...the left ear. And with this I presume that to pierce the right ear meant you were clearly headed in the wrong direction!