As in “Flying off the handle.”
What, exactly, is the handle.
The handle to what?
From Why You Say It by Webb Garrison
From “Why You Say It” by Webb Garrison (Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tenn.)
“Fly off the handle – If you’ve ever seen a person ‘fly off the handle,’ you may have been impressed at the energy and speed involved with that eruption of anger. Frontiersmen found it hard to control their tempers when tools suddenly failed them. A common cause of such a turn of events was the shrinkage of wood – universally used to tool handles. After having hung in a shed for months, the handle of a hoe or a rake was likely to come off after a few strokes. In the case of an ax, badly worn or shrunken wood is positively dangerous because the head of the tool can come loose at the first lick. When the blade of an ax flies off the handle, it endangers the user and everyone standing nearby. That makes it almost as great a source of danger as a violent explosion of temper.”
Source
Gee that answer is so obvious that it makes sense.
BTW, am I the only one without a copy of this book? 