Meaning
Of a vessel: to roll over on its side until the keel shows and the boat capsizes. Of a person or animal: to collapse, fall over suddenly or faint - from heat, illness, shock or laughter - and, usually jocularly, to die. By extension of a plan, business or effort: to fail or collapse abruptly. The register is informal and often humorous. Usually informal. Applied to people it most often means fainting or collapsing; applied to vessels it means capsizing. Turn turtle is a close nautical synonym for capsize. Regional use: General English; nautical origin; common in British and American informal speech.
Origin
The verb keel itself is ancient, but the phrasal verb is nineteenth-century nautical. The OED's factsheet dates the ship-sense verb keel - labelled US English - to 1807, earliest in Joel Barlow: verified directly. Wiktionary documents the phrasal verb with dated quotations: the figurative die sense in 1834 (Davy Crockett's Narrative, he keeled over), the literal capsize in 1844 and in Melville's Moby-Dick of 1851 (how the skiff keels over), and the faint sense in 1854 and 1876 (Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms dates the figurative use to the mid-1800s and says it alludes to a vessel rolling on its keel and capsizing.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- keel something over
- nearly keeled over
Usage Examples
- It was so hot at the parade that two of the trumpet players nearly keeled over.
- The dinghy keeled over in the gust and spilled all four of us into the lake.
- My grandfather swore he would keel over on the spot if he ever paid full price.