Quibble du jour: 'go ballistic'

There are a great many technical terms whose colloquial usage is entirely unrelated to its actual meaning.  There is probably no better example than the phrase to "go ballistic".   It's a phrase I've never had any use for, but finally I got curious about what people thought they were saying when they used the phrase.  Turns out they mean " to become overwrought or irrational", which has nothing whatever to do with its actual meaning.

The phrase is usually thought to have something to do with guided missiles, but in the field of rocketry, a missile "goes ballistic" at the point that the rocket engine shuts off. From that point on, the missile behaves purely as a ballistic missile, i.e. an unpowered missile, influenced in its flight only by the force of gravity and its interaction with whatever atmosphere it may encounter.  

The term "ballistics" goes back to the Latin "ballista", an engine for hurling rocks for military purposes.  Thus the earliest ballistic missiles were rocks.   Later on, with the advancement of  technology, cannons hurled a more sophisticated form of ballistic missile, namely cannonballs or grapeshot.