Old Man of the Sea, The

The, in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Arabian Nights' Entertainments, an old man whom Sinbad undertook to carry across a brook. When he had been hoisted to Sinbad's shoulders he clung so tightly that he could not be dislodged. At last Sinbad succeeded in getting his disagreeable burden drunk and then shook him off. The expression, "old man of the sea," has come to be used in a figurative sense for a bore, or for any sort of inconvenience which cannot be gotten rid of, and more particularly for one who has become a load for his party or who is seriously in the way.