{"id":24576,"date":"2026-04-23T20:15:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24576"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:15:30","slug":"losing-marbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24576","title":{"rendered":"Losing Marbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you say that someone has <strong>lost their marbles<\/strong>, you either mean that they can&#8217;t find their marbles, or that they&#8217;re crazy, mad, incompetent, are losing their mind, or are suffering from a mental illness.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/waynetd\/2341345468\/in\/photolist-4yU1rj-5Wxam9-4ZDhzw-EYU74-55FXFe-8Z1rTp-F54iMG-9Ho6uS-D9yuoq-o7yr-xZbuP-4i1b4s-9HkiTH-5CnG71-6cGs45-9Hkbov-9Ho4Mf-jnqe-CbA9w-8NL1mG-9eA3FQ-LGW6y-exhNX-9Hkhvn-exhPj-9HkdMk-jnpC-8rKEp1-3LhphE-6MqSuV-exhP2-fgxG4s-jnp1-ba8vtx-5vcSEb-jnpr-4fdjg5-9Hodau-35PzbU-exhPb-EPiS4-61HctW-8N3Zab-8MZURg-8N3Z7L-2idYPzg-8MZUNM-8MZUVz-9HoaC5-8N3Z97\" title=\"Marbles\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/3183\/2341345468_c312a2d8fa_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"346\" alt=\"Marbles\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not known exactly when or why losing one&#8217;s marbles came to be associated with losing one&#8217;s mind. One early example that connects marbles with mental capicity appears in a story from April 1898 in <em>The Portsmouth Times<\/em>, a newspaper from Ohio in the USA:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nProt. J. M. Davis, of Rio Grande college, was selected to present J. W Jones as Gallia\u2019s candidate, but got his marbles mixed and did as much for the institution of which he is the noted head as he did for his candidate.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By the early 20th century, losing or not having all one&#8217;s marbles was commonly associated with a decent into madness. For example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/452979?searchText=%28Marbles%2C+doesn%27t+have+all+his%29+AND+%28mentally+deficient%29&#038;searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DMarbles%252C%2Bdoesn%2527t%2Bhave%2Ball%2Bhis%26so%3Drel%26prq%3Dmentally%252Bdeficient%26swp%3Don&#038;ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&#038;refreqid=fastly-default%3A9ac50a46dbfac80779aebf32fbcc6135&#038;seq=14\"><em>American Speech<\/em><\/a>, Vol. 2, No. 8 (May, 1927) has a collection of dialect words from West Virginia that includes the definition:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<em>marbles, doesn&#8217;t have all his<\/em> (verb phrase), mentally deficient. &#8220;There goes a man who doesn&#8217;t have all his marbles.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One French equivalent of this idiom is <strong>perdre la boule<\/strong\/>, which literally means &#8216;to lose the ball&#8217;. <\/p>\n<p>Other ways to say this in French include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>perdre le nord = &#8216;to lose the north&#8217; &#8211; see also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23132\">Losing the North<\/a><\/li>\n<li>perdre la boussole = &#8216;to lose the compass&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>perdre la raison = &#8216;to lose the reason&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>perdre le sens commun = &#8216;to lose the common sense&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>se perdre les oies = &#8216;to lose the geese&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>p\u00e9ter les plombs = &#8216;to blow the fuses&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>p\u00e9ter un c\u00e2ble = &#8216;to blow a cable&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Incidentally, <strong>perdre<\/strong> comes from the same root as the English word <strong>perdition<\/strong> (eternal damnation, hell, absolute run, downfall).<\/p>\n<p>Are there interesing ways to say that someone has <strong>lost their marbles<\/strong> in other languages?<\/p>\n<p>Sources:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/lose-your-marbles.html\">https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/lose-your-marbles.html<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdre_la_boule#French\">https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdre_la_boule#French<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdo#Latin\">https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdo#Latin<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdition#English\">https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/perdition#English<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Blog horizontal --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"1685480124\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you say that someone has lost their marbles, you either mean that they can&#8217;t find their marbles, or that they&#8217;re crazy, mad, incompetent, are losing their mind, or are suffering from a mental illness. It&#8217;s not known exactly when or why losing one&#8217;s marbles came to be associated with losing one&#8217;s mind. One early [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,125,10,78],"tags":[164,158,355,138,609,610,281,612,611,163],"class_list":["post-24576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-idioms","category-language","category-words-and-phrases","tag-english","tag-etymology","tag-idioms","tag-language","tag-lose-ones-marbles","tag-lose-ones-mind","tag-omniglot","tag-perdre-la-boule","tag-perdre-le-nord","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24576"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24578,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24576\/revisions\/24578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}