I have been asked the origin of the expression “I don’t like the cut of his jib”.
Whilst there is an obviously nautical origin, the style of a boat’s jib seems an obscure point on which to judge the character of its owner.

But it doesn’t say “his boat’s jib”. It says “his jib"…

Are we fending off CANOE here?  What, then, outside matters nautical, is a jib?

There is a jib on a crane, but the earliest citation for ‘cut of one’s jib’ in the B&M OED is “If she dislikes what the sailor calls the cut of their jib.”

bayard - 12 April 2008 05:00 AM

Are we fending off CANOE here?  What, then, outside matters nautical, is a jib?

Several opinions out in the realm of Google suggest that since the jib is the foremost sail, perhaps “his jib” could be his face or maybe nose.  Or his initial presentation.

No accounting for this, just offering.

The OED says:

Orig. a sailor’s figure of speech, suggested by the prominence and characteristic form of the jib of a ship.

Brewer says - “The contour or expression of his face. This is a sailor’s phrase. The cut of a jib or foresail of a ship indicates her character. Thus, a sailor says of a suspicious vessel, he ‘does not like the cut of her jib.’ “

Brewer’s Millennium Dictionary (offline) says: A person’s appearance, attitude or manner. ‘I don’t like the cut of his jib’ means ‘I don’t like the look of him’. The phrase is of nautical origin. Jib here is the triangular foresail. Sailors used to recognize a vessel at sea by the cut of her jib.

jibs are made from sailcloth, which like all woven cloths, is made from two sets of threads (warp and weft) interwoven at right angles to each other. There is a right way and a wrong way (probably lots of wrong ways) of cutting a triangular piece out of such a cloth, so that it will maintain its shape during the sail’s lifetime, and have maximum resistance to deformation and tear under stress. Sailing ships carried an expert sailmaker who should know how to cut sailcloth, and an experienced sailor would be able, just by looking, to tell the difference between an inexpertly cut jib and a properly done job. Why a jib? because the jib’s triangular, whereas the major sails of a square-rigged ship (excepting staysails and such) would be square, or trapezoidal, and correspondingly easier to cut properly.

I don’t believe the figure of speech is necessarily a reference to a person’s physical or facial features. I think its meaning is best explained in the dictionary reference quoted by venomousbede.

The palm must go here to Lionello for by far the most convincing explanation of the expression: I simply can’t believe that “Sailors used to recognise a vessel ... by the cut of her jib”, that seems to me to be ridiculous, when there would be dozens of other recognisable points about a ship apart from the (comparatively small) jib-sail. “I don’t like the cut of his jib” means “he looks untrustworthy”, and as Lionello says, you couldn’t trust a badly-cut jib, as it would be liable to tear or rip under strain.

Zythophile - 15 April 2008 01:24 PM

“I don’t like the cut of his jib” means “he looks untrustworthy”, and as Lionello says, you couldn’t trust a badly-cut jib, as it would be liable to tear or rip under strain.

Or, possibly more likely, a skipper who would put up with a less-than-competent sailmaker would also put up with incompetence in other areas, resulting in a badly-run ship.