off the trolley
 adj.

    Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes catatonic,
    but doesn't actually crash or abort. See glitch, bug, deep space, 
    wedged.

    This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang elsewhere.
    A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs against, the heavy wire
    that carries the current to run a streetcar. It's at the end of the long
    pole (the trolley pole) that reaches from the roof of the streetcar to the
    overhead line. When the trolley stops making contact with the wire (from
    passing through a switch, going over bumpy track, or whatever), the
    streetcar comes to a halt, (usually) without crashing. The streetcar is
    then said to be off the trolley, or off the wire. Later on, trolley came to
    mean the streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common in the 1890s, the
    term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are only seen on
    historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs to contact the
    wire.

off the trolley

   Describes the behaviour of a program that malfunctions and
   goes catatonic, but doesn't actually crash or abort.  See
   glitch, bug, deep space.

   [Jargon File]