I never knew and got curious and looked it up. I guess it makes more sense than slamming your testicals against the wall.
You will hear Apollo astronauts occasionally say “all balls” or “five balls.” After performing maneuvers, they would check their trajectory by taking fixes on stars using the telescope/sextant, this data would be fed into the guidance computer, which would compute their deviation from their intended course. If they were perfectly on their intended course, it would display a variation of 00000. “All balls.” Perfectly accurate.
“Just under the wire” has a similar aviation lineage. According to my dad some WWII fighter planes had a wire attached across the throttle lever slot to mark the point that was considered “full throttle”. The wire was breakable, so a pilot in a desperate situation could push the throttle farther forward if necessary, but I think there was a danger of blowing up the engine. So being just under the wire meant not quite past that point.
Cool story, but not where that comes from and not how that phrase is used.
“Just under the wire” means “just in time”, “at the last second”, etc.
It comes from horse racing and the wire they would strong across the finish line. Same as “down to the wire”
Interesting - I know about the horse-racing wire, it was to trip the photo-finish camera.
WEP, war emergency power. Depends on the aircraft how long you could use it.
The Corsair had water injection as a WEP, I forget by what mechanism it worked but it could make that big ol’ Pratt & Whitney eat its own guts for more horsepower.
Water methanol injection, cools the air charge which makes it denser, more air you can cram in the more fuel you can cram in with it.
https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/the-f4u-1-and-water-injection.40598/?amp=1
Thanks, that’s a lot more than my sketchy memory of what my dad told me (WWII pilot). Might not be where “under the wire” came from but it’s fascinating.
Kind of like ‘having one’s balls in a vice’. It actually refers to the old days when ball bearings were made by hand. It was tedious work and the pressure to make ball bearings for the burgeoning industrial revolution was intense. They were cut out of metal and then polished smooth, secured in a vice. Hence, ‘having your balls in a vice’ meant being under intense pressure.
10/10 shitpost
Now I’m confused. Was OP just kidding about the balls in a vice saying?
Nowadays I just keep my dick in a vice, as AvE recommends
I’m offended by them calling testicles “vulgar”
Little Known Fact: In Texas they don’t have testicles, they have texicles.
Heh nice
Vulgar in linguistics refers to street usage instead of formal. See also Classic Latin vs Vulgar Latin.
Interesting. Similarly, balls out has nothing to do with testicles
Wow I never knew this either. This is a good one
I can Accept that
Based on the video for that song, the band was unaware of this.
Yeah probably. I like their interpretation though
Oh shit sam o nella was right
Who?
Sam O’nella is a comedy education YouTuber
Thank you, thank you, sir or madam
I guess it makes more sense than slamming your testicals against the wall.
In a way relating to human anatomy that has caused me to remove this phrase from my usage in recent years (because I worried how others would take it) the balls=testicles actually always made sense to me, but I’m not going to explain it.
However, now that I know what the most literal interpretation of the phrase actually is, I can feel safe using it again!
