To Lose Your Marbles

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

To lose your marbles. Bogart s performance was so affecting that many have supposed the film to be the source of the phrase. Become irrational or senile. Once you do so they disappear sometimes dumping marbles on your opponent but more and more marbles keep dropping down from the top. You may move your rows of marbles up or down or move a specially designated pitch line from right to left in order to get 3 4 or 5 similarly colored marbles in an unbroken horizontal array.

To become of unsound mind. To lose one s marbles is to lose one s mind. In the 1954 film the caine mutiny humphrey bogart linked insanity with marbles when he showed his character the demented lt. To become of unsound mind.

To start to forget things and be confused meaning pronunciation translations and examples. Lose one s marbles to be or become mentally deficient incompetent or deranged. Queeg restlessly jiggling a set of metal balls when under stress in court. Lose your marbles definition.

My poor grandmother started losing her marbles after she had a stroke. Lose one s marbles to be or become mentally deficient incompetent or deranged. The underlying reference is apparently to the children s game played with multicoloured glass balls.