The story
This is a genuine sailing phrase, unlike many sayings that only claim to be. It joins two terms old sailors used about the wind.
A ship sailed “large” when the wind blew from behind or well astern. That was easy sailing: the crew could spread the big square sails and run with the wind. Hakluyt’s accounts of voyages used “large” this way in 1591.
Sailing “by” was harder. It meant heading toward the wind, as close to it as the ship could manage. A ship that could sail well both by and large, close to the wind and before it, handled well in every condition.
The phrase appears in Samuel Sturmy’s sailors’ guide The Mariners Magazine in 1669: “Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge.” From there it moved ashore, where “by and large” came to mean taking everything into account.
Sailors meant it literally: in all kinds of wind. Everyone else means it the same way, only about life. Taken by and large, things come out about even.
