tight as a tick

[Benjamin Zimmer]

I've posted about Katie Couric's usage of "tight as a tick" and the
ADS-L discussion of the idiom in a Language Log piece that also
examines Couric's claim that the phrase "too close to call" was first
used on CBS News in the early '60s:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005243.html

--Ben Zimmer


On Dec 20, 2007 5:01 PM, Gregory McNamee <gm at gregorymcnamee.com> wrote:
>
>  From a newbie to this listserv:
>
> I heard "tight as a tick" / "full as a tick" growing up in Virginia
> (with Katie Couric living just down the road), where there are plenty
> of ticks. The reference is I knew it is to neither drunkenness nor
> miserliness, but to being stuffed: someone who has overeaten is "tight/
> full as a tick," gorged to the point of popping, like a tick full of
> blood.
>
> According to the Washington Post, the expression in the close-race
> sense is attributable to Dan Rather, not Couric: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/edwards_internal_poll_shows_th.html
> . That's North Texas dialect for you....

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