To Lose Your Marbles Expression

The underlying reference is apparently to the children s game played with multicoloured glass balls.

To lose your marbles expression. Lose one s marbles to be or become mentally deficient incompetent or deranged. The idiom to lose one s marbles has a rather convoluted origin. It is as it happens pretty much contemporary with the play. To lose one s marbles may be a manifestation of the colorful language of that game playing on the idea that losing your marbles by having them knocked out of the ring means losing the game.

The association may have been boosted by the alliteration in the words mind and marbles. The term lose one s marbles has undergone an evolution in meaning. My poor grandmother started losing her marbles after she had a stroke. At one time to lose one s marbles meant to become angry.

Lose your marbles go insane. In the 1954 film the caine mutiny humphrey bogart linked insanity with marbles when he showed his character the demented lt. Another word for lose your marbles. To lose one s marbles is equally american and the same comment applies.

To lose one s marbles means to go insane to take leave on one s wits to lose one s mind. Go mad go crazy take leave of your senses lose your reason go off your trolley collins english thesaurus. To start to forget things and be confused meaning pronunciation translations and examples. Which clangs discordantly on my british ear since lost them good is an americanism not natively known this side of the big water and therefore an expression that the scottish barrie could not have used.

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. Informal marbles as a term for a person s mental faculties probably originated as early 20th century american slang.

Queeg restlessly jiggling a set of metal balls when under stress in court. At one time marbles was a slang term for furniture a misrepresentation of the french word for furniture meubles.