APAD: Over a barrel

Meaning:

    To be `over a barrel' is to be left without choice; in someone else's power.

 

Background:

   People used to be punished `over a barrel' and this is where the expression

   derives from.

 

   This is an American phrase and first appeared in the late-19th century. It

   alludes to the actual situation of being draped over a barrel, either to

   empty the lungs of someone who has been close to drowning, or to give a

   flogging. Either way, the position of helplessness and in being under someone

   else's control is what is being referred to.

 

   An example of such a literal "over the barrel" experience was recorded in the

   Delaware newspaper The Daily Republican, July 1886, which reported the

   initiation ceremony of a college fraternity:

 

     He was bound hand and foot and rolled over a barrel. Next he was stripped

     naked and placed upon a cake of ice... and branded on his back with the

     fraternity emblem.

 

   Soon after that `over a barrel' took on the figurative meaning of `in

   trouble; without any hope of deliverance. This usage is recorded in The

   Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 1893, in a story of an unfaithful wife:

 

     The good, true, loving wife she appeared to be, being, to use a slang

     phrase "over a barrel." The woman who is "over a barrel" was Mrs. Nellie

     Brundage, and the man "not her husband" was S. R. Clute.

 

   The modern-day usage of `over a barrel' has softened somewhat. It is now used

   to refer to anyone in a situation where they have little choice.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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To everything there's a season. The oak-staved whiskey barrel might find use as

a corrective device for, say, desk workers. So the phrase might evolve to refer

to something positive, like a therapeutic process where the person is strapped

over the barrel sphere, facing out, to fix his forward neck and haunched

shoulders and improve his thoracic spine flexibility. Gyms and yoga studios are

the first to adopt the technology. Doctors are eager to prescribe the procedure,

insurance would cover the cost and over time, an industry is born.

 

Entrepreneurs invent a tube, called the vduct(V for vino), to guide the content

of the barrel into the human body, either orally or through IV. This becomes

popular in bars, where the service is dubbed TUI (therapy under influence)

which would give a boost to the vineyards and distillaries. The possibilities are

endless.