...like an errant locomotive...

January 13, 2005 12:59 PM

kwotefilta "...like an errant locomotive..." [more inside]

an "errant locomotive", possibly "it ran through my head like an errant locomotive". Hilarious phrase...
I can't recall where I first heard this quote or if I just hallucinated it. It may have been Family Guy or Futurama, or Dilbert, seemed to have been in a funny context. Google turns up nothing relevant. Thanks

posted by ac to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

It is a standard phrase, much like knight errant. Do you have any clues as to the show?
posted by milovoo at 1:37 PM on January 13, 2005

on google it shows up mostly in news stories about, yeah, errant locomotives... ie, train crashes. Maybe you read it in some ordinary paper and it popped back into your head randomly at some point.

I have to say upon hearing it, it sounded almost like a soul coughing lyric to me :) - it's kinda random and kinda rhythmic and just slightly wordy/highbrow...
posted by mdn at 7:32 PM on January 13, 2005

Response by poster: I am almost certain it was the hilarious TV show Family Guy.... however Google always, always turns up FG quotes. Who knows... guess this is not the most intriguing AskMe post, but it's been bothering me.
posted by ac at 5:13 AM on January 14, 2005

I've never heard the phrase before, myself. My first thought was that it might be just a slightly more formal way of saying "runaway train." Is it possible that in some parts of the world (the UK or Australia for example), folks say "errant locomotive" and in others "runaway train"? If this is the case, then presumably the phrases share a common origin.
posted by Clay201 at 6:22 AM on January 14, 2005