Origin of “Thrown for a Loop”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hi, who’s this?

Trista from Olympia.

What’s your name?

Trista.

Trista.

From Olympia. Olympia, Washington?

Yep, Olympia, Washington.

Well, welcome to the show, Trista. Glad to talk to you. How can we help?

I have a question about the phrase, either throw me for a loop or saying something threw you for a loop.

And I Googled it, I looked it up, and I could only find what it meant, but I couldn’t figure out anything about where it came from.

Oh, interesting. So you say throw for a loop?

Yeah, or more often I’ll say that something threw me for a loop.

And what’s happened when that happened to you? What causes you to say that?

What kind of thing?

Usually, well, the last time, the reason I thought about it when I emailed is that I had been working on some homework and something was really confusing.

And it took me a long time to understand the concept.

So I had emailed a friend and said that, man, this concept really threw me for a loop.

I’m surprised that you didn’t come across the work of Michael Quinian, who is a great British language researcher, because usually when you search for things like this, he’s got it covered.

And he’s got a great entry on this.

And to summarize, his speculation is that it comes from boxing and that if you are thrown for a loop, and we’ll get to why it sounds a little odd in a minute, if you’re thrown for a loop means you were hit so that you were knocked over, heels overhead, basically.

And I can imagine you’re dizzy and disoriented.

You’ve got those little stars going around the top of your head.

Yeah, the canaries and the stars twirling around your head.

Oh, interesting.

I thought maybe baseball or a roller coaster.

Well, that’s the other thing.

So he believes, if I’m reading correctly here, he believes that knock for a loop, knock for a loop comes from boxing.

Throw a curve, you throw somebody a curve, you’re also giving them a situation that they didn’t expect to encounter, right?

And that perhaps throw for a loop is a combination of knock for a loop and throw someone a curveball.

Oh, interesting.

So you get a mixed metaphor, so to speak.

Well, great.

I wouldn’t have guessed that at all, that it had come from boxing.

I do recommend Michael Quinian’s website.

It’s called Worldwide Werbs.

He’s got a great newsletter.

He does a lot of good work out there.

And he is one of the stalwarts of the language trades.

Worldwide Werbs.

And then is it Quinian?

Yeah, Quinian is a great name, by the way.

Q-U-I-N-I-O-N.

Quinian.

N-I-O-N.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for calling, Trista.

Take care.

Calling. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org. And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.