balloon [L16th] In the 16th century a balloon was either a type of a game played with a ball kept in the air or a spherical architectural decoration. Later it could be a firework or used to describe someone considered inflated. In 1782 the brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier built a large balloon from linen and paper and successfully lifted a number of animals, and the following year people, whereas the toy version did not appear until 1800. The word was adopted from French or Italian and goes back to the same root as *ball. The phrase when the balloon goes up, ‘when the action or trouble begins’, has been used in Britain since the 1900s. It may refer to the release of a balloon to mark the beginning of a race. By contrast, to go down like a lead balloon is American in origin: lead balloon appears as a term meaning ‘a failure, a flop’ in a comic strip of 1924 in which a man who had been sold dud shares discovered they were ‘about to go up as fast as a lead balloon’.