This is an expression I’ve often wondered about. One often reads that a person may be “beside oneself with joy/rage/curiosity.” Where does this expression come from? I’ve asked people & searched the internet for etymology with no real answers.
This has bugged me for literally years. help!
Actually, it’s a little bit older than that, but Mark 3:21 is a good start. The phrase (to be beside one’s self) dates back to 1490. It is derived from an obsolete secondary definition of “beside” meaning “outside of.” Thus, to be “beside one’s self” means to be “outside of one’s self,” or “out of one’s mind,” which is closer to how more modern translations render it. I can’t read original Greek, so I can’t tell you how it would be literally translated, but I have no doubt that the idiom is how they would have said “out of one’s mind.”
–OED and KJV
Mjollnir: Thankyou, thankyou!! I missed your reply. I was going to go bump the question back to the top and offer oral sex to anyone with an intelligent answer, but now I don’t need to!
phew
“I was going to go bump the question back to the top and offer oral sex to anyone with an intelligent answer, but now I don’t need to!”
Sure! Now you come up with this offer you were going to make. I knew the answer all along but was waiting for the goodies. Oh, well. 