This month’s question was what does the phrase “off the wall” mean? To quote directly from our source:
Off the wall. Unorthodox; bizarre. The allusion may be to the unpredictable angle of return of a ball rebounding from a wall, as in baseball or squash. The phrase dates from the 1950s.The question (and answer) were taken from p. 493 of Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable compiled by Adrian Room. The book was published by Cassell & Co. in 2000.
