bats in one's belfry
1
9.9
- idiom
- Offensive
:
estar como una cabra
- Ah, you got bats in your belfry.
Examples
-
"'Cause the Major's got forty kinds of bat in his belfry, that's how come.
Fiction book (1994) -
" Between you and me, I think he's got bats in his belfry... "
Fiction book (1992) -
Some say that artist is a bit eccentric because he has bats in his belfry when he talks about his ideas.
-
My neighbor has bats in his belfry; he believes his pet cat can speak human languages.
-
Everyone laughed when she suggested we should wear hats made of foil; they said she had bats in her belfry.
Antonyms
How Crazy
- Slur
524
4.0
- Offensive
- Offensive
1
9.9
99
7.2
67
4.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase evokes a concrete image (bats living in a bell tower) so a learner who knows 'bats', 'in', 'one's' and 'belfry' could guess a sense of disorder or something being wrong; however the jump from that image to the idiomatic meaning 'crazy' is metaphorical and somewhat culture-specific. Because it depends on an inferred metaphor and on a less common word ('belfry'), the meaning is not fully predictable from the parts.
Etymology
The idiom bats in one's belfry comes from the image of a bell tower, a belfry, full of noisy flying bats. So if someone is said to have bats in their belfry, it means they seem 'crazy' or very odd.