FROM: bartleby.com
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
To be “three sheets to the wind” is to be drunk. The sheet is the line that controls the sails on a ship. If the line is not secured, the sail flops in the wind, and the ship loses headway and control. If all three sails are loose, the ship is out of control.
Here’s all the pertinent legal stuff on the quotation. There was not enough to do just a bit, then reference it, so there we are…
(The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. )
How can you be seaworthy and not know that??
As to the other two…I’ve always heard “sodapop stand” more that popsicle, and that’s six ways from Sunday.