"balls to the wall"

Sat Feb 11 13:31:40 UTC 2006

Thanks for this!  I wondered how it had passed the TV censors.

Joel

At 2/11/2006 02:51 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>On 2/10/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > Speaking of Safire, what are the odds that he'll be mentioning, next
> > week perhaps, the recurrence of "balls to the wall" in today's
> > testimony by "Heckuvajob" Brownie, late of FEMA, about the need for
> > an all-out response and in the responses by the senators (at least
> > one of whom, I forget which, turned it into "balls to the walls").
> >
> > But, as I'm sure Safire will also make clear, "balls to the wall"
> > doesn't derive from what it sounds like it derives from.  Cf. e.g.
> > http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19990708
>
>Even better, see:
>http://www.slate.com/id/2136001/

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