Off your trolley

Posted by Baceseras on July 10, 2009 at 19:44

In Reply to: Off your trolly posted by RRC on July 09, 2009 at 15:51:

: : Ok I found out that the phrase "Off your trolly" originated in Toronto Canada. The old Queen Street "Trolly stop" was just at the fork in the road where the Provincial Lunatic Asylum existed (As it was then named) so the reference is an obvious one.

: Perhaps it's not relevant, but maps.google.com doesn't show any "fork in the road" in that vicinity (1001 Queen St W, Toronto, Toronto Division, Ontario, Canada) in the current day. It appears that they have torn down the original historic 1850 building, so I suppose it's possible that the street layout has changed as well.

[This needs looking into. The phrase "off your trolley" is one of many drawing on the possible mishaps of industrial-age functions - "gone off the rails," "jumped the track," "thrown a piston," and others comparing people at times to locomotives, trolleys, or "motor-cars" (as they used to be called). The notion of the 'trolley' expression originating in Toronto sounds to me like the usual tour-guide malarkey. When you think about it, every big city, without exception, that had a trolley system, must also have had, near some point of the lines, a psychiatric ward, a prison for the criminally insane, a scrapyard, or all of these, or something else that could be pointed to with a wink and the sly comment, "You've heard of being 'off your trolley' - well, there's where it comes from." In fact it's more likely the joking reference (whether to loony bin or whatever) arose AFTER the 'trolley' expression was already in widespread use. - Baceseras.]