Flying off the handle and I'm hopping mad

[Chefguy]

I can’t believe this one hasn’t been asked before, but a search of the archives shows nothing. How does ‘flying off the handle’ equate to being irrational or angry? I can see how a pot could fly off a handle, but the pot doesn’t get angry, nor does the handle. Do people hop when they’re angry? Are rabbits always pissed off about something?

[Catalyst]

“Flying off the handle” refers to the loose head of a hammer flying from the handle during use (cite).

“Hopping mad” apparently really does come from the idea that one would be angry enough to jump around (cite).

[Chefguy]

@Catalyst

“Flying off the handle” refers to the loose head of a hammer flying from the handle during use (cite).

“Hopping mad” apparently really does come from the idea that one would be angry enough to jump around (cite).

Quick answers. I’m not quite satisfied with the second one, though. The cite just repeats the meaning of the phrase, but doesn’t speak to the etymology. If one uses the British meaning of mad=crazy, rather than mad=angry, “hopping mad” could have derived from observing those afflicted with St. Vitus’ Dance. Just a thought.

[tomndebb]

You never saw my old boss get mad. Throwing his hat on the ground, literally hopping from one foot to the other as he uttered the foulest imprecations that he could conjure up. (Fortunately, that sort of anger was reserved for inanimate objects such as recalcitrant tractors or unfortunate changes of the weather. He could actually control himself when an employee messed up.)

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Another cite for jumping up and down mad

[Q] From Michael Turniansky: “In Patchwork Girl of Oz (L Frank Baum, 1913), I came across the expression mad as hops. Is that the forerunner of hopping mad? And what is so mad about hops?”

[A] There are indeed a number of old expressions using the word hops in the sense of the plant. One was as thick as hops, referring to the dense mats of creeper you can get when hops grow wild and unchecked, and another was as fast as hops, because the plant dies back in winter and then grows very rapidly from its base each spring. These were both known by 1630 at the latest. The phrase hopping mad also dates from the seventeenth century, but it uses a different sense of hop, the one of jumping up and down on one foot, in other words of being so angry that one is literally unable to keep still. It seems that sometime in the nineteenth century in the US somebody punned by combining these phrases to create as mad as hops. The expression is first recorded in Harper’s Magazine in 1884, but is probably older. So there’s nothing mad about the plant at all.