Well, Halloween is upon us, and I guess a lot of people are not crazy about it, but hopefully not many are driven up a wall preparing for it at the last minute, or wishing it didn’t exist.

Very seldom have I experienced being “driven up the wall,” but occasionally there is a person who manages to do this to someone else. Of course, this is not an intentional endeavor, but, nevertheless, it is real.

“Driving someone up the wall” is an idiomatic expression which means that someone or something is extremely annoying. It derived from the idea of two people being together in a locked room with no way to escape and one annoying the other to the point to wish for a means of escape. Since there is no way out, the person is ‘climbing the walls’ figuratively. Like many other metaphors, there was a similar phrase before it came into being. This one was used in Tales and Novels by Maria Edgeworth, 1833 in ‘Drama’ on page 239:

      “…since you drive me to the wall I must say no, and I do say no.”

Here the meaning is somewhat ambiguous. The actual phrase started showing up in writing about 1970. A very early example is found in Desperate Characters by Paula Fox, published that year:

     “They drive me up the wall. Don’t make wife jokes to me.”