talk someone's arm off

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Idioms and Phrases

Also, talk someone's ear or head or pants off ; talk a blue streak ; talk until one is blue in the face ; talk the bark off a tree or the hind leg off a donkey or horse . Talk so much as to exhaust the listener, as in Whenever I run into her she talks my arm off , or Louise was so excited that she talked a blue streak , or You can talk the bark off a tree but you still won't convince me . The first four expressions imply that one is so bored by a person's loquacity that one's arm (or ear or head or pants) fall off; they date from the first half of the 1900s (also see pants off ). The term like a blue streak alone simply means “very quickly,” but in this idiom, first recorded in 1914, it means “continuously.” The obvious hyperboles implying talk that takes the bark off a tree , first recorded in 1831, or the hind leg off a horse , from 1808, are heard less often today. Also see under blue in the face .

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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