off one's chump

English

Etymology

See chump (“the head”), and compare off one's head.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Prepositional phrase

off one's chump

1. (UK, Australia, slang) Crazy, insane.
   • 1883, Richard Harris, The Humourous^[sic] Story of Farmer Bumpkin′s Lawsuit, Gutenberg eBook #30551:

     “Ay, sure ’ave ur; and wot the devil I be to do agin that there Snooks, as ’ll lie through a brick wall, I beant able to say. I be pooty nigh off my chump wot wi’ one thing and another.”

   • 1888, Rolf Boldrewood (Thomas Alexander Browne), A Sydney-Side Saxon, Gutenberg Australia eBook #0607291,

     ‘ […] I′m not off my chump, no more than you are, and I haven't smelt spirits since last Christmas.’

   • 1890, Catherine Martin, An Australian Girl, 2002, Margaret Ellen Allen (biographical information), Rosemary Campbell (introduction and notes; editor), University of Queensland Press, page 90,

     It put him off his chump entirely. He went completely to the bad.

   • 1891, The Australian journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, science, and Art, volume 26, page 477:

     Such luck as he was going for was literally impossible, and he was regarded as “off his chump,” as someone put it expressively.

   • 1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter VI, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC:

     What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week.

   • 1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act II, page 125:

     I'm going away. He's off his chump, he is. I dont want no balmies teaching me.

   • 2010, Gwyneth Daniel, The Word Mountain, page 53:

     So I′m back to square one, worrying again about whether I′m off my chump even considering doing an MA in Creative Writing, MAICW.