Madam, - I greatly enjoyed Brendan McWilliams's Weather Eye of April 18th dealing with the origins of that term for drunkenness "three sheets in the wind", as, indeed, I enjoy every Weather Eye.
It is with some reluctance, therefore, that I write to point out a misuse of language in his column. Your correspondent referred to the "maudlin demise of young Paul Dombey". The word maudlin means drunken and tearful. If follows that an event may be tragic but never maudlin. People, on the other hand, can be horribly and embarrassingly maudlin - when they are three sheets in the wind! - Yours, etc.,
PADRAIC SHERIDAN, Upper Clanbrassil Street, Dublin 8.