Bricking it
"To be extremely frightened or nervous."
A widely used piece of modern British slang for acute fear, but its exact origin has never been pinned down. It surfaces in British English from the later 20th century onward, already in its current form and meaning, without any documented explanation of why "bricks" specifically became the image for fear rather than any other object. Most slang dictionaries record the phrase itself without venturing a confident origin story.
Sources: Recorded in British slang from the later 20th century, cited in slang dictionaries including Partridge's Dictionary of Slang; no documented origin story survives.
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