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Merriam-Webster traces the first use of the idiom "lose the plot" to 1984. We can do better! The earliest instance we've yet found of having "lost the plot" involves a fisherman's story in E. Boyd Smith's My Village, 1896. Then there's a reference to being "apt to lose the plot" in the New York Times, June 29, 1902. (Our image is from Grave Mood Rings.)
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