June 29, 1996

hell in a handbasket

When things aren't going so well, they're "going to hell in a handbasket." As Chico Marx would say, "Why a handbasket?''

Well, you have to get there somehow, don't you? And a handbasket has the advantage of alliteration, always important when it comes to this sort of phrase.

The expression to hell meaning 'to ruin or destruction; to an unfortunate state of affairs' is found since the early nineteenth century. The early examples are quite natural sounding today: "There's a thousand dollars gone to hell," wrote someone in 1827. ("Go to hell!" used as an exclamation is older, and is not often found in fancier forms.)

Simple but pungent expressions like this often develop elaborated variants. For example, the imprecation "kiss my ass!" can be expanded (from one direction) into "kiss my royal Irish ass!" or (from another) into "kiss my ass in Macy's window!" Similarly, the expression "go to hell" developed a number of variants describing the conveyance for reaching Pluto's realm, and these conveyances don't necessarily make sense. Carl Sandburg, writing about the 1890s, comments that "The first time I heard about a man 'going to hell in a hanging basket' I did a lot of wondering what a hanging basket is like." Whatever a "hanging basket" is, it gives us the alliteration, like such other common examples as "going to hell in a hack [i.e. a taxicab]," "handcart," and our "handbasket." Non-alliterating versions include "in a wheelbarrow," "on a poker," "in a bucket" ("But at least I'm enjoying the ride," as the Grateful Dead say), and "in a basket."