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English Idiom: Off the Rails
If you have seen the news at least once in the past two years, you know that politics in the United States is entirely off the rails.
Words such as chaos, disorder, and dysfunction can be used to describe American politics at the moment.
Coincidentally, these words also explain one of the definitions of what it means to be off the rails.
OK, It’s not a big coincidence because I have set up this post this way, but you know what I mean.
American politics is in a dire situation.
To say that today’s idiom is a good description of America’s current political situation is very serious.
On a slightly less serious note, eccentric people can also be described as being off the rails.
Whenever someone/something does not follow the norms of society and does something considered crazy or unusual, we can describe them as off the rails.
From time to time, it can be fun to get outside society’s norms and do something stupid and completely uncontrollable.
It helps to remind us that we are still alive.
In my travels, I’ve met quite a few intriguing people who can be described as off the rails.
Yes, they were eccentric, and some were weird, but maybe they thought the same thing about me, too.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 66.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.