Wednesday WOLF - Haywire

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

In keeping with last week's post about the life of a farm girl, I thought I'd share some wonderful farm origin terminology. Back in the day, bales of hay were secured with a type of wire that was of rather cheap quality, which only makes sense. Hay was baled with the assumption that soon somebody was going to cut it apart and use it, so quality wasn't a huge concern where baling wire came in.

A lot of farmers fastidiously kept their wire after slicing apart the bales, and used it for some quick-fixes around the property - like wiring up a broken gate, or fixing a bit of gutter. Even those of us with the best intentions don't always come back around to fixing something up properly if the slop-job is filling in nicely... and so we let it go.

Farmers with more than few pieces of rusty haywire holding everything together on the farm were said to have lost control of their outfit... they've gone haywire.