BALLS TO THE WALLThe phrase balls to the wall, meaning an all-out effort, sounds as if it is a reference to a part of the male anatomy, giving rise to some confusion as to what it originally meant. However, the original usage has nothing to do with anatomy, coming rather from the world of aviation.On an airplane, the handles controlling the throttle and the fuel mixture are often topped with ball-shaped grips, referred to by pilots as (what else?) "balls." Pushing the balls forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit results in the most and richest mixture of fuel going to the engines and the highest possible speed.The phrase dates to the early 1950s. Several veterans have written me noting their use of the term during the Korean War era. The earliest written citation is a bit later. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang contains a quote from 1966-67, in Harvey's Air War:You know what happened on that first Doomsday Mission (as the boys call a big balls-to-the-wall raid) against Hanoi oil.Like balling the jack, this phrase is often thought to have arisen from railroad work. A speed governor on train engines would have round, metal weights at the end of arms. As the speed increased, the spinning balls would rise--being perpendicular to the walls at maximum speed. But there is no evidence to support this story. No use of the phrase is known to exist prior to the mid-1960s, and all the early cites are from military aviation.
All Your Base Are Belong To UsThis nonsensical phrase first appeared in the English-language release of the Japanese video game Zero Wing in 1991. It's a shoddy translation that became an in-joke among video gamers, who in the spirit of Kilroy and Mr. Chad copied it as grafitti wherever there was a flat surface. In 1998 the phrase began to be posted to the Internet and what had been an in-joke among gamers went mainstream.
