out of hand

"He's not an evil guy. He enjoyed smoking and it got out of hand," said his childhood friend Marty.

UCLA’s defense was dominant against a winless opponent Friday night, with the Bruins controlling a game that quickly got out of hand.

But Jacqueline Simon, the policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal government workers, does not dismiss the assertions out of hand.

“Then I was like this is actually really serious, actually getting out of hand.”

After hearing Wimberley’s “spiel” at a meeting of local landowners not long ago, she committed to burning even though she was “really intimidated, and really afraid things will get out of hand.”