To go wrong, to become overly excited or deranged. Hay-wire is
the light wire that was used in baling machines to tie up bales
of hay. At the turn of the 20th century the expression 'a
haywire outfit' began to be used in the USA. This was used to
describe companies that patched-up faulty machinery using such
wire, rather than making proper long-term fixes. In 1905, The US
Forestry Bureau Bulletin described a 'Hay wire outfit' as 'a
contemptuous term for loggers with poor logging equipment'. By
1920, the use of haywire to mean 'awry' or 'out of control' was
recorded in Dialect Notes, Volume 82: "Hay wire. Gone wrong or
no good. Slang." This may be a reference back to 'hay-wire
outfits' but is more likely to be a literal allusion to
scrambled hay-wire - anyone who has handled coils of wire will
be familiar with its determination to gather into an
irretrievable tangle. To go haywire was recorded in the late
1920s; for example, in this piece about a basketball game from
The Helena Independent, January 1928: "...t