Who Created Phrase Crazy Busy?

Quite often, when asked how I am, I find myself saying, “I’m crazy busy.”

Today when I said that, I found myself wondering the origin of that phrase. It had to start somewhere.

So I went to the alleged source of all knowledge, Google, to see if I could find the origin of the phrase. Was it a TV show where some character uttered those memorable words?

Guess what? Google does NOT know everything. I could find no reference that said John Doe said it on Dump Sit Com.

However, I did find it mentioned in the following places:

(1) a book by Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book About a Really Big Problem. This book won the 2014 Christian Book of the Year Award

(2) a 2012 post on Positively Positive

(3) a post, 14 Phrases We Should All Give Up in 2020, by an ER doctor

(4) a post translating the phrase into Hindi

(5) multiple online dictionaries.

Will I stop using the phrase as the ER doctor suggests in the post? Probably not. It’s just so descriptive. Of course, my mother had a phrase that meant the same thing: “Running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Takeaway Truth

I did NOT learn who created the phrase, but I did learn the phrase has made its way around the world probably for the same reason I cited for using it. It perfectly describes one’s state of having more to do than time in which to do it—and it sounds better than that chicken phrase.

Joan Reeves aka SlingWords: The Word Slinging Adventures of Joan Reeves