[Ads-l] choke/strangle a chicken (UNCLASSIFIED)
Peter Reitan
pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM
Wed May 11 20:10:43 UTC 2016
To push the idiom even further, this (from Scientific American, July 27, 1912, page 53) says that after choking your chicken, you can revive it by blowing it:
[Regarding the namesake of the annual Croonian lecture presented at the Royal Society in London] "Croone it was who, in 1664, offered an experiment of choking a chicken and reviving it by blowing into the lungs with a quill. . . . at the appointed meeting, having choked the chicken with his finger in such manner that there appeared no signs of life, Croone put a slender glass pipe into the bird's throat, and blew air into it, whereupon, says the record, within a little time the chicken came to itself and lived again."
You can't write this stuff.
> Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 17:56:13 +0000
> From: william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL
> Subject: choke/strangle a chicken (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list