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.
