And then a God who really ought not to exist sticks out a great big hand and grabs me by the wrist

[venta]

Why do people say

"That'll go down like a lead balloon"

and mean that the thing in question will go down badly ?

Surely if there's anything a lead balloon will do extremely well, it's go down. Great ideas should be likened to lead balloons.

I propose the phrase

"That'll go down like a helium ferret"

instead.

Comments

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I've always found lead balloons to be appropriately indigestible.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm worried you've experimented!

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's not to do with the ability of a lead balloon to rise or fall per se, but rather with the fact that a lead balloon would bloody useless. Like a chocolate teapot. Or perhaps it is, and by 'go down' they meant 'fail', 'sink', and it's merely coincidence that we now also use the phrase 'go down' to mean 'be received'.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Opens up the question of why is it that 'go down' means 'be received': I guess it's in the swallowing / digestive sense? In which case someting received badly should go down like a particularly spiky and undercooked baby hedgehog, or something like that.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I guess it's in the swallowing / digestive sense

I imagine so.

In that sense, a lead balloon would also go down very badly! Though perhaps not as badly as a spiky lead balloon.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Like a chocolate teapot.

See, I've never got why a chocolate teapot would be useless, because you can eat it. Sure, you don't have a teapot at the end, but chocolate is chocolate even if someone moulded it to something silly like a teapot.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It's useless as a teapot... particularly if you're a chocolate-hater who wants a cup of tea. If you described it as a chocolate novelty shape it'd be fine, but that's selling it quite differently.

I only became familiar with the phrase "chocolate teapot" relatively recently. Useless things in our house were always as much as use as a chocolate fireguard.

[marjory.livejournal.com]

'Chocolate novelty shape' just sounds oo-er to me.

Of course, that would be to me...

[uitlander]

I switched from 'chocolate teapot' to 'lead balloon' as my epithet of choice when someone pointed out (I think it may have been lanfykins that you could eat a chocolate teapot, and it would be most tasty).

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it's like "That will go downhill like a lead balloon" - things going downhill generally being a bad thing (in phrase-land, not in real life)

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

I occassionally use

'that will go down like a cup of cold sick'

which has never been misunderstood and I feel communicates 'very badly indeed' quite well. Sadly it's not original, I think I read it in an interview, but it might have been a film...

Shall try the helium ferret out at some stage...

[ao-lai.livejournal.com]

I first remember it from a Jonathan Creek Christmas Special...

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure I didn't see it there, never having seen such a thing.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I tend to assume 'go down like a lead balloon' means a) not fit for purpose but more importantly b) with an enormous crash, probably breaking toes in the process.

[a-llusive.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that, for air travel, a lead zeppelin is not a good idea. However, I think helium ferret is a much clearer image and intend to adopt it.

[marjory.livejournal.com]

That'll go down like a rat sandwich!

[(Anonymous)]

Lead balloon: go down in the sense of "fail", lead balloons would sink very quickly, as would a bgi-time failure.

Word association

[uitlander]

As soon as I see the words "That'll go down like a helium ferret" my mind goes "trousers?" - which is a very bad thing.