Selections from The Urban Dictionary: "Batshit Crazy"

[UPDATED to add a picture of Charlie Sheen, because (duh) that should have occurred to me before.]

I don't curse much on the blog. Not because I don't swear in real life, that's not even close to true. But when a person is writing, they should usually be able to express themselves more artfully than they do in extemporaneous speech. And because, let's face it, I don't want people sending complaints to Blogger! But there are exceptions. And there are off-color descriptions that are so perfect, I simply can't resist using them. Case in point: batshit crazy.

Exhibit A. Image from
Alan Colmes' LiberaLand

I use this term mostly for specific actions, or overall political behavior, and rarely use it to describe a person in specific. For example, a person may do something batshit crazy, and may or may not necessarily be batshit crazy. In fact, "crazy" is very often just a colloquialism, and I very rarely allege that a person is literally crazy. Except in the case of Michele Bachmann. She's nuts. "Batshit crazy" could have been invented just for her. If you Google search the term and her name, you get over 5,000 matches, and more than double that if you spell her name like it sounds, rather than the crazy way she spells it.

And as perfect a fit as the term and Bachmann are, the definition given at Urban Dictionary is so perfect, I felt I had to share it.  I don't even care if this is a case of Urban Dictionary cross pollinating with Urban Legends.

1. batshit crazy

Exhibit B.

A person who is batshit crazy is certifiably nuts. The phrase has origins in the old fashioned term "bats in the belfry." Old churches had a structure at the top called a belfry, which housed the bells. Bats are extremely sensitive to sound and would never inhabit a belfry of an active church where the bell was rung frequently. Occasionally, when a church was abandoned and many years passed without the bell being rung, bats would eventually come and inhabit the belfry. So, when somebody said that an individual had "bats in the belfry" it meant that there was "nothing going on upstairs" (as in that person's brain). To be BATSHIT CRAZY is to take this even a step further. A person who is batshit crazy is so nuts that not only is their belfry full of bats, but so many bats have been there for so long that the belfry is coated in batshit. Hence, the craziest of crazy people are BATSHIT CRAZY.


Dude that guy on the corner wears a tinfoil hat and ripped all the wires out of his house so the government couldn't listen to his thoughts.


Really?


Yeah, he's batshit crazy.

Source: Urban Dictionary