# Origin of "bat in the belfry"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 28, 2006, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375 "2006-07-28T08:30:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/1 "2006-07-28T08:30:33Z")
What’s the origin of the phrase “bat(s) in the belfry” and what does it mean?
---
### Author:  [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/2 "2006-07-28T08:46:23Z")
I believe that it means that a person is slightly loopy/crazy/insane. A belfry is the area where bells are hung in the top of tower, like in a church steeple.
I don’t know where the phrase originated but it’s meaning is quite clear, a person with bats flying around in their head would be less than intelligent 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/3 "2006-07-28T10:03:22Z")
I offer this for analysis by greater minds than mine. I paraphrase some entries from _Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang._
The entry for _belfry_ (1900’s-1910’s) states that it is slang for head (no, not that kind of head).
The entry for _bats_ (20th C.) gives us crazy, insane or eccentric.
However _batty_ (20th C.) is also defined as crazy, insane or eccentric.
Interestingly there was a 19th century barrister called Fitzherbert Batty whose certification as mad in 1839 caused much interest (probably among his clients). That said, it is moot that Mr. Batty is the source since the chronology militates against it
Make of that what you will.
---
### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/4 "2006-07-28T12:36:16Z")
_Bats in his belfry_ seems to have become the phrase about 1899 in the US. It replaced the former phrase _wheels in his head_. Can’t say why. Probably something used by a humorist or a play, and it was picked up as sounding better.
---
### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/5 "2006-07-28T14:23:19Z")
I suspect “bats” preceded “bats in the belfry”. Bats tend to dart around and rapidly change directions when compared with the flight of the typical bird (although many insects fly in a fashion similar to a bat’s trajectory), & by metaphorical analogy represent the thinking of the lunatic.
Belfries are where you might often find bats, and they are up top of the structures that have 'em, ergo represent the head.
---
### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/6 "2006-07-28T14:34:52Z")
Phrases like this with alliteration or rhyming are likely to enter the vernacular even if they don’t make as much sense as this one (e.g., drunk as a skunk).
“Toys in the attic” means the same thing, though I think is chiefly British, popularized by the Aerosmith tune/album of the same name.
---
### Author:  [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/7 "2006-07-28T19:07:26Z")
> [@samclem](#):
>
> It replaced the former phrase _wheels in his head_.
But having bats in the belfry means you’re nutty. Having the wheels turning in your head means you are thinking (presumably sane) productive thoughts.
---
### Author:  [@Lexfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lexfire)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/8 "2006-07-28T19:30:25Z")
Just have to share: 🙂
There is a town in Montana named Belfry.
The high schools mascot name is the Bats.
🙂
(as of mid-90’s that is…assume it still is)
---
### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/9 "2006-07-28T20:09:28Z")
> [@gigi](#):
>
> But having bats in the belfry means you’re nutty. Having the wheels turning in your head means you are thinking (presumably sane) productive thoughts.
That’s what it means to you, today. Who knows what it meant to someone in the 1880’s?
---
### Author:  [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2006, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/10 "2006-07-29T00:34:48Z")
In Janet Kagan’s very enjoyable SF novel [Mirabile](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812509935/sr=1-2/qid=1154132534/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-9687765-2208826?ie=UTF8&s=books), one of her characters makes the point that a church belfry that’s infested with bats is no longer being used, and is almost certainly decrepit. A functioning belfry would have bells, and they would be rung frequntly. This would scare off, and possibly deafen, any bats that might live there.
So if you have “bats in the belfry”, your uppermost part is unused and in serious disrepair. 😛
[This](http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/56600.html) web site and [this](http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterB/belfry.html) one give the earliest written uses of the term in the US in the 1890s. Maybe there were enough broken-down churches at that time to give this alliteration currency.
---
### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2006, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-bat-in-the-belfry/366375/11 "2006-07-29T00:38:26Z")
Toys in the attic;
Bars in the window;
Surely gone fishing;
They must have taken my marbles away…