But what does that mean?

A couple of nights ago A. and I were on the phone and the conversation turned to sayings and where they come from. So I thought I would do some research and share some of their origins. Some of these I already knew through various forms of trivia, others from people I know, and some from the good old interweb. Here goes

1. "Off his rocker" : From best I can gather it started in the early steam engine days. The beam engine in particular, it rocked back and forth and if it came off of its pivot/rocker it would go nuts and flail around and destroy everything around it. This was the particular phrase that began the whole conversation in the first place.

2. "Fly off the handle" : From the early days of axe handles. Before there were any real mass merchandised, or assembly line type axes being made a lot of the time the craftsmanship wasn't always up to par. A person could be chopping away and mid stroke the axe head would come flying off with unpredictable and often bloody results.

3. "Balls to the walls" : Strangely enough I learned this one from Jay Leno a few weeks ago when he was describing his steam engine. The governor on the engine is basically two balls on iether side of a bar of some kind, held together by pins into the tops and bottoms of the rubber balls. (At least they looked rubber) Anyway they would push out toward the sides when the engine picked up speed. When they were as far out as the pins would allow them to get the governor kicked in, thus the term. It sort of resembled one of those "egg beater" windmills only with a ball halfway up on either side.

4. "Stool Pigeon" : This one is rather brutal. In early hunting days the hunters would catch a carrier pigeon and nail him to a tree stump. The poor bird would cry out, and others would flock to him to see what the alarm was about. The hunters would shoot them down by the dozen. They are now extinct.

5. "Wild goose chase"
It was a game sort of like follow the leader, on horseback. It was played in Elizabethan England. This is the way they thought that geese behaved.


Hope it was entertaining!