drive someone up the wall
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to annoy or frustrate someone extremely
Literally: to drive a person up a wall
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
They still drive her up the wall — and no one acts it out quite as well as Kirstie.
she couldn't understand how, she said oh she said and, and a couple of channels that used to drive her up the wall.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “drive someone up the wall” mean?
to annoy or frustrate someone extremely Literally: to drive a person up a wall
Is “drive someone up the wall” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.