Цитата сообщения el_flaco Words and their Stories - BEHIND THE EIGHT-BALL

When someone is "behind the eight-ball" he is in a difficult, if not impossible situation.
The expression comes from the game of Kelly pool. Pool or pocket billiards, is a table game played with fifteen numbered balls and a cue ball. Players strike the cue ball with the end of a cue, or stick, sending it into one or more of the numbered balls. The idea is knock each of the numbered balls into one of the six pockets around the edge of the pool table.
In one kind of pool game called eight-ball, players try to put the numbered balls into the pockets, with the eight-ball the last to go in. A player loses if he sinks the eight-ball before all the other balls are in the pockets. A player can put his opponent in poor position by leaving the cue ball behind the eight ball. The eight ball blocks his opponent from a shot at any of the other balls.
So, if you are behind the eight-ball, your position is bad. There is almost no way out of the situation. You are in trouble.
A New York newspaper, in a report on a new book, used the expression this way: "An attempt to describe what makes the drawings funny lands you behind the eight-ball." In other words, trying to describe why the drawings are funny may be impossible and you may seem foolish to try.
Someone who is "behind the eight-ball" is usually "in a pickle," or "a pretty pickle." "In a pickle" is another expression that means you are in a difficult or unpleasant situation.
Some experts say this expression comes from an old Dutch saying, "sitting in pickle juice." Sitting in pickle juice indeed would be unpleasant. Pickling was a very common way to keep food from spoiling before days of ice boxes or electric refrigerators. When food is pickled, it is kept in a pickle juice made of salt, vinegar and spices.
There is still another expression in English that means you are in trouble. You are in a "fine kettle of fish." This expression was first used 200 years ago by British writers. One story says that it comes from an early British custom of cooking fish in huge pots or kettles. The cooked fish were served at parties along the river. As the story goes, a cook did something wrong, producing a kettle of fish that no one could eat. That cook was surely in trouble for his "fine kettle of fish."
We still use all these expressions today. In fact, I will be in a "fine kettle of fish," or "in a pretty pickle," and probably "behind the eight-ball" if I don't end this story now.

(c) VoA