What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Fly off the handle’?
This is an American phrase and it alludes to the uncontrolled way a loose axe-head flies off from its handle. It is first found in print in Thomas C. Haliburton’s The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England, 1843/4:
“He flies right off the handle for nothing.”
Haliburton was an inventive writer and had a hand in the coining of several commonly used phrases:
See other phrases that were coined in the USA.