off one's chump
prep_phraseEtymology See chump (“the head”), and compare off one's head.
1
Australia, UK, Colloquial Crazy, insane.
- “Ay, sure ’ave ur; and wot the devil I be to do agin that there Snooks, as ’ll lie through a brick wall, I beant able to say. I be pooty nigh off my chump wot wi’ one thing and another.”1883, Richard Harris, The Humourous^([sic]) Story of Farmer Bumpkin′s Lawsuit, Gutenberg eBook #30551:
- 1888, Rolf Boldrewood (Thomas Alexander Browne), A Sydney-Side Saxon, Gutenberg Australia eBook #0607291, ‘ […] I′m not off my chump, no more than you are, and I haven't smelt spirits since last Christmas.’
4 more examples
- 1890, Catherine Martin, An Australian Girl, 2002, Margaret Ellen Allen (biographical information), Rosemary Campbell (introduction and notes; editor), University of Queensland Press, page 90, It put him off his chump entirely. He went completely to the bad.
- Such luck as he was going for was literally impossible, and he was regarded as “off his chump,” as someone put it expressively.1891, The Australian journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, science, and Art, volume 26, page 477:
- What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week.1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter VI, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC:
- I'm going away. He's off his chump, he is. I dont want no balmies teaching me.1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act II, page 125: