The Phrase Finder was once again where I located a definition. Several sources described the expression to mean behaving in an impulsive or irregular manner or in irregular bursts.  The word “fit” can be used to describe a medical condition called a paroxymal attack.  There are sudden spasms or convulsions caused by multiple sclerosis, head trauma, epilepsey, malaria, and several other conditions.  Fit can also be used to describe an emotional reaction. William Warner wrote in Albion’s England in 1581, “His seruants fear his solemn fittes.” Fits and starts both can mean sporadic activity and the expression was first recorded by Robert Sanderson in Sermons in 1681, “if thou hast these things only by fits and starts.”

I was asked about the origin of the expression, which usually contains more words to describe a hair that has found its way into a position to make a person behave in an uncomfortable, strange, or unexplainable manner. Blogdom.org believes the saying evolved from the skittishness of hares during the breeding season. It gives the example of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Wild hare was used to describe the erratic behavior of rabbits in rut, which then created the expression used to describe behavior that defies explanation.

I heard a commentator describe the amount of United States governmental debt to be “beyond the pale.” Charles Funk’s book about expressions explains that pale was used in the early days of English history to describe an area under governmental control defined by paling, which is a fence made with wooden stakes called pales. The expression originally defined areas outside of control, which made the areas attractive to rogues. The worldwideword web site explains that the expression evolved to mean actions that are outside the limits of acceptable behavior. 

The Pickwick Papers written by Charles Dickens in 1837 has one of his characters saying to another, “I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself beyond the pale of society, by his most audacious, disgraceful, and abominable public conduct.”

I recently watched the movie “Good Will Hunting” again, and Will has the following conversation through a cafe window.

“Will: Do you like apples? 
Clark: What? 
Will: Do you like apples? 
Clark: Yeah. 
Will: Well, (holding a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it against the window) I got her number. How do you like them apples?”

Wikipedia and other sources speculate the expression came from World War I when allied soldiers used mortar shells they called “toffee apples” (candied apples that have a stick in them to hold them while being eaten). Soldiers may have shouted the phrase across the lines “in sort of a victory cry” after a mortar shell hit the target.

The first known printed use was in a U.S. Army unit’s history. A soldier used the remark to express disappointment when he was told the unit was not going to receive many supplies.

Charles Funk in his book, “A Hog on Ice,” observes that when someone says a speaker using this expression is referring to someone they wouldn’t recognize. Perhaps they once knew the person, but have now forgotten. He speculates the expression originated over arguments about painters depicting both Adam and Eve with navels while critics insisted they did not have them. 

A Sherlock Holmes fan proposed in 1944 that when Holmes died and went to Heaven he was assigned to solve the mystery of what happened to Adam and Eve. “He alone knew all others from Adam, and could speedily pick out the missing pair, for he alone…knew that they would be the only two without navels.”

A reader inquired about this expression and I’m once again relying on the Phrase Finder for the origin. It means “items of quality offered to those who aren’t cultured enough to appreciate them.” The expression may have originated in France in the early 1400s.   In appeared in Matthew 7:6 of Tyndale’s Bible, in 1526, “Nether caste ye youre pearles before swyne.” “The biblical text is generally interpreted to be a warning by Jesus to his followers that they should not offer biblical doctrine to those who were unable to value and appreciate it.”