diff --git a/aten/src/ATen/native/Linear.cpp b/aten/src/ATen/native/Linear.cpp
index 74b5ddc6229..4ad28f3957a 100644
--- a/aten/src/ATen/native/Linear.cpp
+++ b/aten/src/ATen/native/Linear.cpp
@@ -70,6 +70,14 @@ static inline Tensor _flatten_nd_linear(const Tensor& input, const Tensor& weigh
 
 
 Tensor linear(const Tensor& input, const Tensor& weight, const c10::optional<Tensor>& bias_opt) {
+  // _matmul_impl checks this again later, but _flatten_nd_linear does not work on scalars inputs,
+  // so let's try to catch this here already
+  const auto input_dim = input.dim();
+  const auto weight_dim = weight.dim();
+  TORCH_CHECK(input_dim != 0 && weight_dim != 0,
+              "both arguments to linear need to be at least 1D, but they are ",
+              input_dim, "D and ", weight_dim, "D");
+
   // See [Note: hacky wrapper removal for optional tensor]
   auto bias = bias_opt.has_value()
     ? c10::MaybeOwned<Tensor>::borrowed(*bias_opt)
@@ -82,7 +90,6 @@ Tensor linear(const Tensor& input, const Tensor& weight, const c10::optional<Ten
     return xnnpack::linear(input, weight, *bias);
   }
 #endif
-  const auto input_dim = input.dim();
   if (input_dim == 2 && bias->defined()) {
     // Fused op is marginally faster.
     return at::addmm(*bias, input, weight.t());
diff --git a/test/test_nn.py b/test/test_nn.py
index 23376f55741..e0c1f438fee 100644
--- a/test/test_nn.py
+++ b/test/test_nn.py
@@ -6526,6 +6526,14 @@ tensor(..., device='meta', size=(1,), requires_grad=True)""")
         expected = m(inp.view(6, 5)).view(2, 3, 8)
         self.assertEqual(expected, m(inp))
 
+    def test_linear_raise_on_scalar_input(self):
+        # This used to cause an int underflow issue when reshaping the input
+        # see https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/119161
+        m = nn.Linear(1, 1)
+        inp = torch.ones(1).squeeze()
+        with self.assertRaisesRegex(RuntimeError, ".*both arguments.*1D.*"):
+            m(inp)
+
     @parametrize_test('device', ['cpu'] + (['cuda'] if TEST_CUDA else []))
     @parametrize_test('bias', [
         subtest(False, name='nobias'), subtest(True, name='bias')])