fix someone's wagon

Example: “He keeps parking in my spot, but I'll fix his wagon.”

Origin: Builds on an older, now largely obsolete sense of "fix" meaning to immobilize or render unable to move — the same root survives today in "affix," to attach something firmly in place. By around 1800, "fix" alone had already come to mean punishing someone or maneuvering them into an awkward, powerless position. "Wagon" was added sometime in the 1900s, and two rival images compete for what it contributes: one points to actual westward-migration covered wagons, sabotaged the way you might jam sand into an axle to disable it; the other suggests a child's toy wagon, either genuine children's playground slang or an adult's mocking reference to an opponent framed as no more formidable than a kid's plaything. Neither theory is definitively confirmed.