Sunday throat

[Michael B Quinion]

Thanks to everyone who had a go at explaining 'marilyze'.

Could I trouble the list again? Another subscriber has asked about
the phrase "Sunday throat" for windpipe. My draft reply says:

> It's hardly common, to judge from the few references that have
> turned up, though it does still seem to be known today, and it's
> certainly American in origin.
>
> The two places in which I've definitively managed to track it down
> are both books from the early part of the twentieth century. One
> is The Lure Of The Dim Trails by B M Bower, dated 1907: "Hank was
> taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple.
> Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his
> Sunday throat - and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's
> Sunday throat, eyed him with suspicion". The other is from The
> Eskimo Twins, by Lucy Fitch Perkins (1914): "The water went down
> his 'Sunday-throat' and choked him!".
>
> Apart from this, I'm at a total and complete loss. Why "Sunday"?
> Can anybody explain?

Can anyone add anything to this?

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <editor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>