Hello and welcome to the English Language Clinic. This week I have been asked: ?What does ?round the bend? mean?? ?Round the bend? is an informal idiom, used to describe someone who is acting in a strange way, usually because something highly frustrating has caused him to exhibit irrational behaviour. There are a huge number of synonyms for this idiom including ?insane?, ?crazy, ?mad? and ?demented?.

Although these terms are frequently used, especially informally, always avoid them when referring to actual mental illness, as they tend to be used to refer to an extremely wide range (spectrum) of psychiatric conditions and are considered inaccurate and offensive. Many synonyms of ?round the bend? are, rather bizarrely, related to food. For example, a person might be described as being ?nuts?, ?crackers?, ?bananas? or ?a fruit cake?.

To ?drive someone round the bend? is, therefore, to cause him to act in an irrational manner and to display the characteristics of having an unsound (damaged) mind. The expression originated in Victorian England. It was common for large houses of this period to have long, straight driveways, which let people see the house from the road, and hopefully be terribly impressed. Those with mental illnesses were taken to mental hospitals (?asylums?). The driveways of Victorian asylums were always curved, to prevent members of the public seeing the patients.

Thus, to be ?driven round the bend? was to be brought to such a place, and to be ?round the bend? was to be a patient. (There was once a particularly notorious medieval mental hospital situated in Barking, which has left us with the expression ?barking mad?.)

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