Meaning
So overwhelmed by a strong emotion - usually grief, worry, rage, or joyful excitement - that you temporarily lose your normal self-control or composure. The triggering feeling is nearly always named immediately afterwards ('with worry', 'with joy'). Emphatic but standard; used with strong emotion of any valence, though distress is the most typical. Regional use: General English.
Origin
In this idiom 'beside' does not mean 'next to' but carries a Middle English sense, 'outside of' or 'away from', which Grammarphobia (citing the OED) dates to the late 1300s; to be beside oneself is thus literally to be outside one's own mind. The OED's earliest citation of the phrase is William Caxton's 1490 translation of the Aeneid, the Eneydos, 'mad and beside herself'. The King James Bible of 1611 made it familiar through Festus's rebuke of Paul, 'Paul, thou art beside thyselfe' (Acts 26:24), and Queen Victoria used it in her 1884 journals. Etymonline likewise dates the expression to the late 1400s, glossing it as 'out of one's wits', and notes that 'beside' itself descends from Old English 'be sidan', 'by the side of'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- beside herself with worry
- beside himself with rage
- beside myself with joy
- beside oneself with grief
Usage Examples
- Marisol was beside herself when the moving van arrived a day late with half the kitchen missing.
- Fans were beside themselves after the equalizer in stoppage time.
- He has been beside himself with worry since Tuesday, refreshing his inbox every few minutes.