reapersun replied to your post “The narrative we’ve been given for those simply doesn’t seem to jive.” Very, very softly I whisper, “Is the word you mean maybe ‘jibe’?”

jibe is a word??

It’s sailing jargon that’s made it into common usage.  Jibing is a move where you change direction by moving the sail.

You know how in movies there’s that long beam that comes swinging across to knock an unsuspecting dude off a boat?  That’s the boom of a fore-and-aft sail.  Fore-and-aft sails are specifically set up to be movable so that a craft can quickly change direction by shifting the sail to catch the wind differently.  Kind of like a fish’s fins.  Very popular, for instance, with racing sailboats that need a lot of mobility.

(They should be tied down, though.  Leaving the thing to flap randomly doesn’t do anybody good.  You move it to where you want it and then you tie it down so that it’ll stay there.)

So people started saying, “That doesn’t jibe” as a metaphor for things like, “The angle at which you are coming at this problem does not match reality.”  And after a while, people forgot it was even a metaphor and just kept saying it.