tight as a tick

[Gregory McNamee]

 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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