The word traces denotes the long, thin leather straps that secure a horse to a wagon. The expression to kick over the traces, meaning “to become unruly,” refers to the action of a horse literally kicking over those straps and getting all tangled up. It can be used metaphorically to describe a person who rebels against authority or tradition. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Kick Over the Traces”
The other day I felt compelled to go back and watch the 1994 movie called The Madness of King George.
Have you seen this?
It’s about the monarch who is going mad.
And he uses a phrase in there that I had to go look up, kicked over the traces.
You know this phrase?
Yeah, this is from horses or oxen.
It is indeed.
Yeah.
The gear used to hitch them to a wagon or plow or what have you.
Yes, yes.
That long leather strip that holds them to the plow or the wagon or whatever is called the trace.
And so if you kick over the traces, it’s like you’re getting so agitated that your legs go up over the traces and you get all tangled up.
It’s used to describe, say, somebody who goes off to college and kicks over the traces for the first time.
You know, just goes wild.
Right.
They’re no longer like just plowing those steady straight rows.
Right.
Right.
And obeying the whip of another person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which makes me think of the word delirium, which has to do with a furrow.
Oh.
And if you are going out of the furrow, delirium, I think in Latin.
It means to go out of a furrow.
Yeah.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
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