Chinese water torture

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Saturday, December 9, 2000 3:41 pm -0500 Drew Danielson
<drew.danielson at CMU.EDU> wrote:

> Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>> Does everyone else associate "Chinese water torture" with the idea of
>> being tied down and having the torturer drip water on your forehead
>> drop by drop until your forehead begins to give way under the
>> pressure?  Would water really do this?  It does somehow sound a bit
>> like the alligators in the sewers or the
>> theft-of-suitcase-with-dead-dog-inside story.
>
> This is the definition of Chinese water torture that I remember learning
> as a young boy...  It's something that I learned from a friend who was
> interested in experimenting with this technique on our little brothers
> (good thing he didn't know about the rag-in-the-mouth method).
>
> I think that eventually one could drill a hole in someone's forehead
> using this method, but it would be over the course of geological eons,
> and we weren't able to hold our brothers down for that long.  Actually,
> it was described to me as primarily a psychological rather than physical
> form of torture.  The rhythmic drip-drip-drip & the accompanying
> physical sensation was intended to drive the victim insane (our results
> tended to support this conclusion :)

This is the same meaning that I learned as a kid.  And now use to refer to
dripping taps that drive me crazy.

L.

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320