We don't know about you, but we were taken aback to learn that certain terms in our language have made their way into our language — washed up, so to speak — from sea.
By and large, the nautical past of many phrases comes as no surprise. Think of take the wind out of your sails and any port in a storm, for example. But did you know that to sailors to be taken aback means having a ship's sails blown back against the mast through a sudden shift of wind or bad steerage, thereby stopping the ship's forward motion? That phrase's landlubber sense of to be taken unawares developed later. And to mariners, by and large means alternately close-hauled and free, not in general or on the whole.

Then there's touch bottom. Most of us use that verb in its figurative sense meaning to reach the lowest possible point, but sailors hoping to avoid a watery grave also know its literal sense: to scrape or settle upon the sea bottom.

Any jack-tar worth his salt would rather touch and go than touch bottom. That's because at sea, to touch and go is to touch an obstacle or the bottom without sticking fast or foundering. It's easy to see how that term's terra firma noun sense to succeed by a narrow margin and adjective sense uncertain developed.

My personal sea-related term is "hoist by your own petard".
It's not used much around here, though I've heard it. It was an English friend of mine who used it many years ago, and I have been injecting it into my conversation whenever I can! Usually folks who need to hear that term don't like me very much!

Geez, lefois, a person would probably want to keel haul you and hang you from the yard arm for telling them something like that! Avast and ahoy! Thar she blows!