Things Have Gone Haywire!

I happened to say the word "haywire" earlier today. Don't remember why I said it. Probably I was over exaggerating about something. It's what I do best. But I paused in my dissertation long enough to wonder why we say that - where does the word haywire come from?

So, I looked it up and found that hay wire is the wire used to tie hay into bales (duh). However, the term "haywire", meaning things are outta control, didn't come out of the hay fields where makin' hay can mean several things. Haywire actually comes from the world of lumberjacks!

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Hey, Dana, lookit me! I'm choppin broccoli!

Whenever machinery or tools used by lumberjacks were in need of a quick fix they used hay wire. Perhaps duct tape had not yet been invented? So now, when things aren't working properly or they're out of control, they've gone haywire.

Monty Python, of course, has forever changed the image of the once burly plaid flannel clad giant of the virgin larch forest. One can no longer say the word "lumberjack" with a straight face and certainly not without going into a quick rendition of "I'm a Lumberjack (and I'm okay)" So get it out of your system. Click the picture and sing along.