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balls to the wall

adv

Etymology

First attested in the 1960s in the context of aviation, in reference to ball-shaped grips on an aircraft's engine controls (typically throttle, prop pitch and fuel mixture). Pushing these "balls to the wall" would put the aircraft at maximum thrust. Analogous to pedal to the metal. Not related to the term balls-out, which refers to a ball governor on a steam engine. Neither balls-out nor balls to the wall is connected with the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”) except via folk etymology.

Definitions

  1. With maximum effort or commitment.

    • “I always go balls to the wall,” founding Ape Gordon Goner tells Rolling Stone over Zoom.

  2. Full throttle

    Full throttle; (at) maximum speed.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for balls to the wall. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA