(Messed up/Queer/Gay as a) Football Bat (1990)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:56 PM -0500 3/15/04, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>FOOTBALL BAT--1,190 Google hits, 953 Google Groups hits
>
>http://www.warlockltd.com/ess_thgt/downhome.html
>Messed up as a football bat. (when something ain't quite right)
>
>    This is not in the HDAS and not in the CASSELL DICTIONARY OF
>SLANG.  I found it on the above site.
>    Baseball has a bat, of course--not football.
>    Sometimes given as "queer/gay as a football bat."
>

The earliest example of this type I know of is the Latin adverb "ad
kalendas Graecas" ('at/on the Greek calends'), meaning 'never', as
the Greeks (unlike the Romans) did not use calends to reckon time.

larry horn