To Lose Your Marbles Origin

Queeg restlessly jiggling a set of metal balls when under stress in court.

To lose your marbles origin.

Meaning pronunciation translations and examples. The idiom to lose one s marbles has a rather convoluted origin. The underlying reference is apparently to the children s game played with multicoloured glass balls. In the 1954 film the caine mutiny humphrey bogart linked insanity with marbles when he showed his character the demented lt.

The noun marble denoting a hard crystalline metamorphic rock resulting from the recrystallization of a limestone is from anglo norman forms such as marbre and marbelle and from old french forms such as marbre maubre and mabre from classical latin marmor. Informal marbles as a term for a person s mental faculties probably originated as early 20th century american slang. Become irrational or senile. Lose your marbles go insane.

In other languages lose. From the mid 19th century marbles was also used to mean personal effects goods or more generally stuff. Bogart s performance was so affecting that many have supposed the film to be the source of the phrase. To lose one s marbles is to lose one s mind.

Lose your marbles definition. If you say that someone has lost their marbles you mean that their ideas or behaviour. If you lose a contest a fight or an argument you do not succeed because someone does. To start to forget things and be confused meaning pronunciation translations and examples.

At one time marbles was a slang term for furniture a misrepresentation of the french word for furniture meubles. The term lose one s marbles has undergone an evolution in meaning. Meaning and origin of the phrase to lose one s marbles word histories. What s the meaning of the phrase lose your marbles.

This derived from the french word meubles which means furniture. Me losen lesen merging oe losian to lose be lost. To lose one s marbles means to go insane to take leave on one s wits to lose one s mind. Lose one s marbles definition.

Meaning pronunciation translations and examples. What s the origin of the phrase lose your marbles.