THE CAT'S PAJAMAS LIII

Tad Tuleja 

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

LEAD BALLOON

To go over like a lead balloon is to be a dismal failure. The obvious derivation that a balloon made out of lead was doomed to fail is not the actual one. A ballon in France is both a balloon and a large-capacity wine glass. Typically these are made of glass, so that the drinker may savor the appearance as well as the taste of the wine. Ballon-style goblets made of lead were introduced by a Marseilles manufacturer during the notorious glass shortage of the 1870's. This was well before toxicologists had come to understand the dangers of lead poisoning, and so there were no medical objections to the innovation. Fortunately, there were aesthetic ones: The French simply could not abide the notion of quaffing their wine from opaque containers. The lead ballon idea never got off the ground, except to give the language one more synonym for failure - the lead balloon.