Dictionary

scrape someone off the ceiling en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) Used to describe the response to someone who is either experiencing great pain, who is very frightened, or is very elated.
   • Barbara Johnson of Melodyland wrote to me about her Spatula Club. "You need a bit of humor. Parents have to be scraped off the ceiling when they first find out. So we make these little spatulas. . . . " 2011, John White, Parents in Pain, page 64:
   • No, you'd have to scrape me off the ceiling. 2007, James Kirkwood, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead:
   • Expose a pulp or so called “nerve” of an adult tooth accidently,^([sic]) without an anaesthetic, and you will have to scrape your patient off the ceiling. 2012, Dr. Brian La Trobe, Of Diamonds and Dentistry, page 368:
   • I spoke with Kip the other day, and you could scrape him off the ceiling with the obvious pride and excitement he shares with Kinsley. 2007, Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin:
   • It made my inner self so excited I had to think of baseball or they'd be scraping me off the ceiling. 2001, G.C. Rosenquist, The Opening And Closing Of The Moon, page 9:
   • Chapman, you could have scraped me off the ceiling. 2018, Written Off, page Paul Carroll:
   • Occasionally, however, they will get a real thriller, and when the horn goes off at a particularly suspenseful point, they say you can scrape the pilots off the ceiling. 1983, Michael Skinner, USAFE, a primer of modern air combat in Europe, page 8:
   • Do you think you could scrape yourself off the ceiling long enough for us to get some sleep? 1992, Jasmine Cresswell, Nowhere to Hide, page 200:
   • He would come over to my office at least once a week and explode because somebody had been after him. And I would scrape him off the ceiling and send him back until the next week. 1979, A History of Cancer Control in the United States, 1946-1971:

Forms

Relateds

hit the roof

Synonyms

pull someone off the ceiling · peel someone off the ceiling