Mowing down on

[Michael Quinion]

A subscriber asks about the phrase "mowing down on", meaning to eat
voraciously. It isn't in my standard references, in DARE, or in the ADS
archives, but there are a lot of examples on Google. My questioner lives
in Texas but was brought up in Ontario. He says he pronounces "mow" like
"cow". Can anyone provide the background to this expression for him?


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

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