Idiom "sweat bullets"-----influence of German?

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Sun Sep 3 17:31:10 UTC 2006


HDAS will show "to sweat blood" from 1899 but "sweat bullets" from 1958.  Neither appears to be in OED.  I have little doubt that pre-1958 exx. of "sweat bullets" may be found,as the quoatation gives no indicatio that the phrase is a novelty.

  "Sweat bricks" is attested from the early 1970s but is rare.

  I have never encountered *"to shit bullets."

  In 1965, the English writer John Brophy recalled a monologue that he had learned in during WW I that included the phrase: "The camel...has a triangular arse-hole and shits bricks. Hence the Pyramids."

  JL


Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Idiom "sweat bullets"-----influence of German?
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On 9/3/06, David Bergdahl wrote:
>
> One other possibility is a discomfort with the mention of "blood" leading to
> a euphemism beginning w/the same letter, on the model of the substitution of
> C-words for "Christ" in Crap! or Cripes! (whick share the initial /kr/) or
> SH-words for "shit"--shucks! or sugar!

Well, if we're going the euphemization route, what about the
possibility that "sweating bullets" is a minced form of "shitting
bullets"? Or alternatively "shitting bullets" is a dysphemization of
"sweating bullets" on the model of "shitting bricks". (Hmm, I see
"sweating bricks" is also attested. Definitely some cross-pollination
between "shit" and "sweat" forms.)


--Ben Zimmer

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