off the hooks

English

Prepositional phrase

off the hooks

1. (colloquial) Unhinged; disturbed; disordered.
   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     Or was Erskine out of his mind? And he himself Watt was he not perhaps slightly deranged? And Mr. Knott himself, was he quite right in his head? Were they not all three perhaps a little off the hooks?

   • 1665 June 5 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “May 26th, 1665”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume V, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC:

     In the evening, by water, to the Duke of Albemarle, whom I found mightily off the hooks that the ships are not gone out of the river.

2. (colloquial, archaic) Superseded.
3. (colloquial, archaic) Dead.

See also

• off the hook