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Go off the deep end

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To behave in an extremely emotional, reckless, or irrational way, losing one's composure and sense of proportion, often as a result of shock or stress.

Detailed Definition
Go off the deep end means to react irrationally, lose emotional control, or behave in an extreme and excessive way. In poetry, the idiom draws on the image of entering dangerous water beyond one’s depth, making it rich for anxiety, madness, anger, grief, or obsession. It can be comic when describing mild overreaction, but serious when suggesting psychological collapse. Poets can pair it with drowning, pools, seas, or plunges to show how quickly ordinary feeling can become overwhelming.
Example
Example in poetry:
A dramatic poem may show the jealous speaker going off the deep end after one misread glance; In a sea image, going off the deep end becomes both literal and emotional; The phrase can suggest sudden irrationality; A poet might use it to show reason losing its footing.
Additional Notes
Go off the deep end means lose emotional control, become irrational, or react excessively. The swimming-pool image suggests leaving safe shallows for dangerous depth. In poetry, it can be used for panic, anger, grief, obsession, or mental collapse. Students should compare it with being thrown in at the deep end: one suggests loss of control, the other sudden exposure to difficulty.
Also Known As
lose control
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