A dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms and Collocations

lose one’s head • lose one’s mind
lose one’s head —
1
. lose one’s presence of mind; become con-
fused: Don’t lose your head and start the car in gear. Take
things quietly, put the lever in neutral…. 2. become emotion-
ally attached to a person: She is at the age that she loses her
head over every other boy she meets.
lose one’s mind —lose one’s mental faculties; go crazy: Robert
lost his mind and was committed to an insane asylum.
lose one’s marbles • pick up one’s marbles
lose one’s marbles —(coll.) go out of one’s mind; start acting
in a strange way: I may be old, but I haven’t lost my marbles
yet. Cf.: have all one’s marbles —(coll.) be sensible; be in one’s
right mind: Do men who have got all their marbles go swim-
ming in lakes with their clothes on?
pick up one’s marbles —(U.S. coll.) leave an activity one has
been involved in with other people: If you don’t like the way
we do things around here, well, you can pick up your marbles
and leave.
lose one’s touch with someone • lose touch with
someone
lose one’s touch with someone —lose one’s ability to handle a
person: I seem to have lost my touch with my children. They
won’t mind me anymore.
lose touch with someone —cease to be in contact with smb.:
Politicians have become so absorbed in their own war-games
that they have lost touch with the wider world.
lose one’s way • lose way
lose one’s way —
1
. cease to follow the right track; become
lost: The children lost their way in the dark and did no reach
home. 2. be unable to find the right road in life: You seem to
me like one who has lost his way and made a great error in
life.
Note: 
The expression is not antonymous in meaning to the
phrase win one’s way—succeed in following one’s course despite
obstacles: The young fellow who will devote himself to agri-
culture may do even better than the youth who wins his way
to the black-coated servitude of a bank.
lose way —(Nautical) lose speed: The wind failed and
dropped to nothing, the dinghy lost way and drifted towards
three lighters moored abreast.