18 June 2021
The phrase off the wall got its start in American Black slang. It starts appearing in print in the 1950s, but oral use is probably somewhat older. David Claerbaut’s 1972 lexicon Black Jargon in White America defines it thusly:
off the wall, adj. irrelevant; unimportant; uninteresting: an off the wall place. See also lame, Mickey Mouse, tired.
Edith Folb, in her 1980 study of Black slang, Runnin’ Down Some Lines, says it means:
off-the-wall 1. Irrelevant. 2. Nonsensical. 3. Inappropriate. 4. Childish.
Other more general lexicons define it somewhat differently. The Oxford English Dictionary has it as “unorthodox, unconventional; instinctive, intuitive, off the cuff.” And Green’s Dictionary of Slang has the “unimportant, uninteresting” sense, but also includes a separate sense of “bizarre, peculiar.” It is tempting to think of the unorthodox/peculiar sense as being a later variation, but it starts appearing by 1959. So, if it is an outgrowth of the “irrelevant” sense, it is an early one.
Off the wall is clearly in place by the mid-1950s, but since spoken slang almost always precedes its written appearances, it is very likely to have been in use since at least the late 1940s. A hint of earlier use can be found in the 1966 novel A Chosen Few, by Hari Rhodes. Rhodes, who was best known as an actor, served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1949–51, and the novel is based on his experiences being among the first Black marines. Recollections of exact wording that are written down years later must be taken with a grain of salt, so this passage cannot be taken as solid evidence of early use, but it does suggest that the phrase dates to the 1940s:
He blew his cool, called me some off th’ wall names and finally told me what page he was on.
As for solid evidence, Off the Wall appears as the title of an instrumental piece by Marion “Little Walter” Jacobs in 1953. But as the recording has no lyrics, exactly what Jacobs meant by the title is unknown.
And in 1955, Hal Ellson’s (not to be confused with Harlan Ellison) 1955 novel Rock has this:
That disc is off the walls. It’s square, period.
In his 1959 novel Trumbull Park, Frank London Brown uses off the wall three different times, and we start seeing it in the unorthodox/peculiar sense:
Terry said:
“You can't beat the syndicate.”
Seemed like Terry had to keep coming up with those off-the-wall remarks. I was getting sick of this cat:
“What goddamned syndicate?”
"Any syndicate-race syndicate, crime syndicate, big business syndicate, police syndicate-they're all the same. You can't beat them. The Negro has been trying for a century and a half to beat them and look at us-still under attack.”
And a bit later on in the novel:
I don’t know whose church radio program it was that was swinging so nice that January Sunday morning. I mean, organs and choirs and people clapping—not that off-the-wall holyroller kind of clapping, but that happy-in-time easy-going everything-together kind of clapping. Whosever church it was, it was going. I felt happy in my bones, like I had just been sent a message from home.
And the third:
Arthur looked up and laughed sort of quick-like and pulled at his ear; and one by one the brave ones, the not-so-brave ones, the hip ones, the square ones, the men and women—one by one, we all said thanks in our own off-the-wall ways.
And by 1966 we start to see off the wall appearing in the speech of white people. This passage in Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s Angels is about the women who would seek out and attempt to associate with the motorcycle gang. And here it is being used to mean outright strange or wildly unconventional:
Whenever the word "rape” comes up, Terry the Tramp tells the story about the "off-the-wall broad who rolled up to the El Adobe one night in a taxicab—a really fine-lookin chick. She paid the cabbie and just stood there for a minute, lookin at us ... and then, man, she walked across the parking lot like she owned the place and asked us what the hell we were starin at. Then she started laughin. ‘All right!' she yelled. 'I fuck, I suck and I smoke a lot of dope, so let's get started!”
The metaphor underlying the phrase is uncertain, or perhaps fungible depending on what a particular speaker thinks is the underlying metaphor. It can come from the idea of a a ball caroming or bullet ricocheting off a wall, with the accompanying uncertainty as to where it will land. Or it may be an extension of throwing something at a wall to see if it sticks. What does not stick, i.e., that which is not generally acceptable, is off the wall.
Folb discusses the term’s etiology in two passages. The first:
Name terms like jive ass, jive n[——]r, or jive turkey refer to the talker who bounces the conversational ball off the wall, from way out in left field, or who demonstrates ignorance about the subject being discussed. Again, there is the sense of someone out of step.
“Someone comin' from left field, talkin' that bop that don't relate to what you sayin', talkin' nonsense—'Moon gonna fall tonight.’ Just tellin' some jive-ass shit, some off d' wall jokes. Like you settin' dere havin' a good conversation, dude come in talkin' off the wall jive, ‘I'ma burn your ol' lady, moon gonna fall, sun gonna burn.’ Crazy ass hole talkin' trash. Or else, if we all talkin' 'bout dope, and the person say somethin' strange 'bout dope, then you know i's untruth, you say, ‘Man, that's off the wall.’ It don'go along wi' d' conversation.”
And the second:
Because verbal excellence is recognized as an important and powerful way of manipulating others, young blacks early become connoisseurs of good and bad talk, of who shoots blanks and who shoots a good shot. And because many of the verbal contests are played out for others—or are at least within earshot of others—youths have an opportunity to feed back to the contestants how well they are doing.
“Like we was sittin' up at my momma house, sittin' up dere, doin' dis: ‘Boy! That ugly ass bitch, I hear you seein'. 000wheee!!! She look like DEATH, boy! There's somethin' that didn't even dissolve good!’ Now dat righteously funky. He done got down hard an' heavy. Ever'body crack up. ‘Man, he sho' did shoot a shot on him!’ Sometimes dude jus' shoot a blank. His shit jus' off the wall—jus' falls off—don't stick, ain' no good. Nobody say nothin'.
Sources:
Brown, Frank London. Trumbull Park. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959, 176–77, 223, 354. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Claerbaut, David. Black Jargon in White America. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1972, 74. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Folb, Edith A. Runnin’ Down Some Lines. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980, 43–44, 91, 248. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. off the wall, adj.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. wall, n.1.
Thompson, Hunter S. Hell’s Angels. New York: Random House: 1966, 193. HathiTrust Digital Archive.