Lead balloon

A simile for a flop or failure for the obvious reason that a lead balloon cannot stay aloft, first attested in America during the 1920s but only came into widespread use after WWII. In America, the expression is more likely to be ‘go over’ like a lead balloon while in the UK it is more likely to be ‘go down’ like a lead balloon. Ironically, the name of one of the world’s most successful rock bands, Led Zeppelin, derives from a 1960s pun on the expression when someone (no one is sure exactly who it was) predicted that the new band would go down like a lead balloon. This gave Jimmy Page, the band’s lead guitarist, the idea for the band’s name, which he spelled as ‘Led’ instead of ‘Lead’.