| 词汇 | fly off the handle |
| 词源 | fly off the handle. Axes in American pioneer days were fre- quently handmade, frontiersmen whittling their own handles and attaching axe-heads shipped from back East. Because they were often crudely fitted to the helve, these axe-heads often flew off the handle while woodsmen were chopping down trees or preparing firewood, sometimes injuring the axeman or peo- ple nearby. The sudden flying of the head off the axe, and the trouble this caused, naturally suggested a sudden wild outburst of anger, the loss of self-control, or the losing of one’s head that the expression to fly off the handle describes. The expression is first recorded in John Neal’s novel Brother Jonathan; or the New Englanders (1825) as off the handle, but isn’t known in its full form until 1844, when it was used in still another of Thomas Haliburton’s “Sam Slick” tales. See feel one’s oats. |
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