A question from the gallery

Sat Oct 16 01:22:07 UTC 2004

On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 08:17:46PM -0500, Jim Parish wrote:
> An acquaintance of mine wonders about the phrase, "I feel like death
> eatin' a cracker", meaning very bad. She picked it up from a Tennessee
> gal ca. 1982. Does anyone recognize it? Any thoughts on when and
> how it originated?

HDAS records this, under "death eating a sandwich", but with two
quotes for "soda cracker". The earliest is in Ellison's _Invisible
Man._

Jesse Sheidlower
OED