Goat Rope Meaning
Definition: A hectic, confusing, disorganized situation, often with too many people.
A similar expression is goat rodeo.
Origin of Goat Rope
A literal goat rope is an activity at a fair where many people try to catch goats with a rope.
Obviously, this would be very chaotic and unorganized. This expression first started appearing in the 1900s.
Examples of Goat Rope
In the example below, two friends are discussing a recent unusual event that took place in their city.
Ted: Did you hear about that local millionaire who was giving away free money?
Rufio: No, what happened?
Ted: Apparently he hid $100 bills in Easter eggs on Easter all around the city’s biggest park. He hid thousands of these things, and then tweeted about it.
Rufio: Are you serious? How many people showed up?
Ted: Way too many! The police had to come and make people leave. It was chaos. There were fights all over the park.
Rufio: Sounds like pandemonium!
Ted: It was a total goat rope!
This dialogue shows two friends talking together about an old memory they have of a concert.
Zayna: Do you remember that time we went to see our favorite band in concert?
Ben: Of course I do! How could I forget?
Zayna: I can’t believe the band invited everyone onto the stage. In retrospect, that seems like it must have been so dangerous.
Ben: Yeah. I imagine that the security team was panicking. There were so many people swarming the stage, and there was no organization whatsoever.
Zayna: Yeah, despite it being such a goat rope, that was one of the most fun nights in my life!
Ben: Mine too!
More Examples
The excerpt below is about a real goat that went out to sea with the U.S. navy.
- Using an acronym popularized in rap music, some might call this story the GOAT (Greatest of All Time). But more likely, another Navy slang phrase for a messy situation applies: goat rope. –Washington Post
This excerpt is about non-professionals driving in the president’s motorcade.
- “There are so many non-law-enforcement vehicles that it’s going to be a goat rope. Everyone will be responding, police officers and the Secret Service, and it will be all these people running around in a panic like the last scene of the ‘Blues Brothers’ movie, when there’s the big police chase that ends in a wreck of 50 police cars.” –New York Daily News
Summary
The phrase goat rope is a noun phrase that describes a chaotic mess with too many people.
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