Meaning
Crazy, eccentric, or mentally confused; said of someone whose behaviour seems wildly odd or unhinged. Almost always in constructions with 'have', treating the head as a bell tower cluttered with flapping bats. Informal and somewhat dated. Informal and jocular; because it jokes about madness it can sound dismissive of real mental illness. Regional use: American English (origin); now General English.
Origin
American in origin. The earliest instances traced by researchers are from 1897, when the Paducah Daily Sun (Kentucky) reported that a woman 'has bats in her belfry'; Phrase Finder's earliest is the Newark Daily Advocate (Ohio) of October 1900, and Ambrose Bierce in Cosmopolitan (July 1907) treated the phrase as a new curiosity. A London newspaper in 1903 still glossed it as American slang. The adjective batty is slightly older (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 1893) and probably arose alongside the phrase. The image compares the upper part of a church to the head: the belfry is the mind and the bats are its flapping, confused thoughts. A folk story deriving the phrase from a Victorian 'Batson safety-coffin bell' has been checked and found baseless.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bats in one's belfry
- batty
- have bats in one's belfry
- have bats in the belfry
Usage Examples
- After he began talking about broadcasting his dreams on the radio, his colleagues decided he had bats in the belfry.
- You want to sail across the Atlantic in a barrel? People will say you have bats in your belfry.
- The old professor's lecture style looked eccentric, but there was method in what seemed like bats in the belfry.