Plain sailing

Meaning

An easy, uncomplicated course.

Origin

'Plain sailing', along with 'smooth sailing', a variant more common in the USA, is a nautical phrase that has the literal meaning of 'sailing that is easy and uncomplicated'. Both phrases are now used to describe any straightforward and trouble-free activity. There might seem to be be little more to say about this phrase, if it weren't for the existence of 'plane sailing'.

'Plane sailing' is a simplified form of navigation, in which the surface of the sea is considered to be flat, i.e. what mathematicians call a plane surface. The plane method of approximation made the calculations of distance much easier than those of 'Mercator's sailing', in which the curvature of the earth was taken into account. So, 'plane sailing' was 'plain sailing'.

It would be rather neat if 'plane sailing' had come first and that, being an easy and uncomplicated method, it came to be called 'plain sailing'. In fact, it is the 'plain' spelling that is found first in print, in Adam Martindale's A Collection of Letters for Improvement of Husbandry & Trade, 1683:

A token for ship boys, plain-sailing made more plain and short than usually, in three particular methods.

The term must have been in regular use by the turn of the 18th century as, in 1707, Edward Ward made metaphorical use of it in The Wooden World Dissected:

Tho' he guide others to Heaven by the plain-sailing Rules of the Gospel.

The first known use of 'plane sailing' isn't found until much later, in James Atkinson's Epitome of the Art of Navigation, 1749:

Plane Trigonometry applied in Problems of Sailing by the Plane Sea-Chart, commonly called Plane-Sailing.

Most people now make a distinction between 'plain', i.e. easy and simple, and 'plane', i.e. flat. That wasn't so when this phrase was coined. Since the 14th century, although less so more recently, various spellings for 'level and flat' have been accepted - plane, pleyne, playn and, significantly in this context, plain. So, although 'plane sailing' is unambiguous, when a writer used 'plain sailing' any number of things may have been on his/her mind:

- Sailing that was easy.
- Sailing on a flat, level sea.
- Navigation that was calculated using plane (a.k.a. plain) trigonometry.
- Any straightforward task.

In recent years, the introduction of the phrase 'clear sailing' as an alternative to 'plain sailing' may have cleared things up a little. This was used to good, if rather poignant, comic effect in The Simpsons' cartoon The Simpsons Bible Stories, 1999:

Milhouse: Well, Lisa, we're out of Egypt. So, what's next for the Israelites? Land of milk and honey?
Lisa: [consulting a scroll] Hmm, well, actually it looks like we're in for forty years of wandering the desert.
Milhouse: Forty years! But after that, it's clear sailing for the Jews, right?
Lisa: [nervously] Uh-huh-hum, more or less.

See other Nautical Phrases.