Meaning
To become wildly excited, enthusiastic, or frenzied, as a crowd at a game; or, of a person, to be driven crazy with irritation or distraction. The adjective 'bananas' covers both loopy excitement and informal 'mentally unsound'. Very informal. Very informal; ranges from delighted frenzy to comic exasperation. Regional use: General English (American origin).
Origin
American slang of the mid-20th century. Merriam-Webster dates the adjective 'bananas' to 1957 in the 'very excited and wild' sense, glossed with the example 'The crowd went bananas'; Etymonline dates the 'crazy' adjective to 1968 and records an earlier underworld slang sense from 1935. The idiom was current in campus and popular speech by the late 1950s and 1960s and is now general English. Its derivation is genuinely uncertain: commentators have suggested reinforcement from the older 'go ape', to go wild, playing on the monkey-and-banana association, and from 'banana oil', early-1900s slang for nonsense, but no source documents a decisive path, so the origin of the crazy sense is best stated as unknown.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bananas over something
- be bananas
- drive someone bananas
- go totally bananas
Usage Examples
- The stadium went bananas when the equalizer went in during stoppage time.
- That constant beeping from the printer is slowly driving me bananas.
- She went totally bananas over the reunion announcement and booked flights within the hour.