marbles

[Cranch]

What is the origin of "lose your marbles".

[Lonnie]

Try this link, www.backroadstouring.co.uk/phraseorigins.html

[Lonnie]

Sorry, www.backroadstouring.co.uk/phraseorigins.html

[dotjhawkes]

One night on suggestions would do it for most folk about these parts

[08012006]

A Word in Your Shell-like: 6,000 Curious and Everyday Phrases Explained (Collins, �16.99) by Nigel Rees,

Rees explores but dismisses the association of the phrase with the Elgin marbles. "At the popular level," he says, "most people believe the phrase derives from a joke. When Lord Elgin brought back his famous marbles from the Parthenon and they ended up in the British Museum in 1816, the Greeks were hopping mad (and, indeed, remain so). But, with all due respect and however entertaining, this is not an origin to be taken seriously."

According to Rees, "almost everyone" agrees that the expression is American in origin and he notes that the Oxford English Dictionary finds it first recorded in the journal American Speech in 1927. In fact, the OED (Supplement, 1976) provides the actual example from American Speech: "There goes a man who doesn't have all his marbles."

Rees explores the possible association of the phrase with the French meubles, "furniture, movables" (which the OED describes as a false translation), and asks, "Could one imagine 'to lose one's marbles' coming from the idea of losing one's 'mind furniture'?" He quotes in support two sayings that use furniture as an indicator of mental well-being or the lack of it. One is from a correspondent in Cheshire who notes there the expression, "He's got all his chairs at home"; and one from a correspondent in Yorkshire who wrote, "If someone is a bit lacking in the head, we say that they haven't got all their furniture at home." Hence, Rees suggests, "a home without furniture is empty, so 'lost one's marbles' = empty-headed, no longer at home, no longer 'there'."