off one's trolley
1
9.9
- idiom
- Offensive
:
loco
- After hearing his wild ideas about aliens, I wondered if he was off his trolley.
Examples
-
She's been acting really strange lately; I think she might be off her trolley.
-
Are you off your trolley?
-
What would it take to make you go off your trolley?
-
You off your trolley, Musketeer.
-
Laslett's off his trolley if he thinks I'm taking a wage cut.
-
And I can assure you the woman upstairs in my suite is not Princess Stacy, unless she's gone completely off her trolley.
-
If you really believe that, you're off your trolley.
Synonyms
1
9.3
To be very confused or act in a strange way
Acting in a very strange and not sensible way
To behave in a very strange and unreasonable way
Feeling confused and out of control after drinking or when very upset
Acting strange or a little crazy
Antonyms
How Crazy
Surface Forms
Morphology
off + one's + trolley
The meaning 'behaving in a strange or crazy way' is idiomatic and not compositionally derived from 'off' + 'one's' + 'trolley' — knowing the literal words (off, one's, trolley) does not indicate a mental-state meaning because 'trolley' has no obvious metaphorical link to craziness. This is an informal British idiom (cf. 'off one's rocker') whose sense must be learned; cross-linguistically the construction is not transparently predictable, so a B1 learner would likely not infer the meaning from the parts alone.
Etymology
The idiom off one's trolley may come from old trams called trolleys. If someone fell off a moving trolley, they would look wild and out of control, so the phrase now means 'not thinking or acting normally'.