out of control

Idioms and Phrases

Also, out of hand . No longer under management, direction, or regulation; unmanageable or unruly. For example, Housing costs are out of control , or The children were getting out of hand again . The first term uses control in the sense of “restraint,” a usage dating from the late 1500s; the variant uses hand in the sense of “power” or “authority,” and dates from the late 1800s.

Example Sentences

Hearon witnessed Weiss’ skills “handling s—” during a pivotal lake-house sequence that seemingly involved a million moving parts, including a character’s unhinged plan to start a bonfire that gets increasingly out of control.

From Los Angeles Times

At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said he was “inclined to pardon many of them,” but couldn’t “say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.”

From Los Angeles Times

The stand-off follows a government decision to crack down on an industry that has spiralled out of control, with mafia-like gangs running it.

From BBC

“They are making it impossible to build a reasonably priced car, the unchecked and unbalanced homeless catastrophe, & the cost of EVERYTHING, in particular groceries, IS OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

From Los Angeles Times

Global efforts to directly fund local organizations are not moving quickly enough to prevent a public health disaster from continuing to spiral out of control.

From Salon