Get A Grip

Man using a urinal below black text over blue background. 

“Get a grip on yourself” is an idiom typically said to someone in an effort to get them to control their emotions and behave in a more calmly manner. Earlier iterations, like “get a grip,” had different meanings. In the 1940s, it was military slang used to encourage someone to increase effort in what they were doing and transitioned some decades later into college slang meaning to pay attention.

Another meaning of the idiom is to get a good physical hold on something, as this humorous button seems to suggest. Someone standing at a urinal usually must properly hold themselves to correctly use it. If it were a matter of technique, it would probably be important to know that adjusting the angle and stance at a urinal can prevent “splash back” and wet spots on the clothes or floor.