Green around the gills ... meaning someone looks slightly ill and like they're gonna' faint. That is how I have always used it.
Looked and looked and looked but even the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has no info.
Have you heard it?
Most Importantly did you understand it when you read the header for the post?
Any thoughts at all?
wow
I think I have heard it describe nausea or impending sea-sickness.
The phrase is quite familiar to me, particularly in the context of telling someone that don't look like they're feeling very well, but I've no idea of its origin.
Perhaps it has something to do with the way fish look when they have ick and are about to take a one-way trip down the porcelain highway? Or three days afterward, when they're floating half-eaten in the tank? They always seem to take on a bit of a greenish hue at that point.
I found several sites mentioning the phrase.
http://www.cavemansportfishing.com/diana_article.htmShe often helps seasick-prone fishermen who board Hooked Up-the couple's SO-foot Carolina Classic
boat-by offering nausea prevention tips to keep them from becoming green around the gills
Ho yus. Very popular in this part of the manor, squire.
I've used the phrase all my life - exactly as you describe. I'd always assumed the "gills" bit referred to the jawline/neck area.
agreeing with Yoda and wow: a familiar and perfectly common phrase within my experience; I too have used it all my life.
agreeing with wwh: I understand it to refer to nausea, from seasickness or otherwise, but in the immediate sense: not just queasy, but seconds away from upchuck. Would not use it to refer to other illness such as a cold, a cough, or a fainting spell.
I reckon it must've started out as a term used by seafarers as it is almost always used in relation to sea sickness - by people with caucasion complexions.
Went deep sea fishing off Perth last December. One guy was really feeling the swell - went truly green around the gills. First time I'd seen such a classic example - would've laughed but figured, but for the grace of god there go I.
PS Caught one lousy scorpion fish all day. NOT worth the A$100 for the trip. Did however see a whale, that sort of made up for it. Heaps of them off the coast these days.
stales
yep, a familiar one for me too, though I am more familiar with the variant that Wordwind noted.
Wordwind has heard "green about the gills" instead of "green around the gills."
Ah, the vagaries of prepositions. And we wonder why ESL students have problems with them.
Example:
Do you stand in line or stand on line?
And, if you used to do the latter, have you changed to the former because on line means something toatally else in the computer age?
...on line means something toatally else in the computer age?
On line ahn layn
1. Endless waits in queues at the Post Office while the three smelly old drunks who got there first attempt 79 unlikely transactions involving import of pornography from Bratislava
2. Endless waits in cyberspace while the three odourless drunks who got there first try to download 79 pages of improbably chested pornography from California
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The Merkin Heritage® Dictionary of the English Luggage, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Humpin Mufflin Company. Published by Humpin Mufflin Company. All rights reserved.
Faldage asked:
Do you stand in line or stand on line?I mostly stand in
a queue.
Ah, the vagaries of the Atlantic divide.
Yes, I did understand it when I read the header but I don't remember ever actually "learning" the expression. We seem to pick up expressions like this 'out of the air' so to speak while we are growing up. How we know what they mean when we first hear them, is beyond me. There must be many expressions like this. Can you think of any more?
Interestingly enough, Wow, Brewer's Dictionary of phrase & fable (in my hardcopy edition) includes the following phrases but, as you posted, not "green about the gills" (which is probably better known than the other phrases):
Blue about the gills [Down in the mouth; depressed looking]
Pale about the gills [See White below]
Rosy, or red about the gills [Flushed with liquor]
White about the gills [Showing unmistakable signs of fear or terror or sickness]
Thank you all.
Now, just to keep it going, any other phrases one "picks up" (usually in childhood) and accepts as to meaning as suggested by Plutarch's
post?
Note to self : Go bookstore, find phrase and fable book at reasonable price that has green around gills in it
I'm afraid I'm "gill"ty of not being able to completely answer your question, however, I did come up with some not altogether useless tit-bits.
The term gills can among other things mean:
2. Applied to various organs, etc. resembling the gills of a fish. a. The wattles or dewlap of a fowl.
I was surprised by how long the definition of gill was. Now as you will see below, it seems there was reference to every colour but green!
3. Attributed to persons: †a. with jocular allusion to the capture or holding of a fish by the gills.
1589 Pappe w. Hatchet 3 Martin beware your gilles, for Ile make you daunce at the poles end. 1599 Minsheu Span. Dial. (1623) 67/2 He throwes againe the dice, and he drew vp all, and so he left me hanging on the gill [marg. as a fish], without a farthing. a1616 Beaum. & Fl. Wit at Sev. Weap. ii. ii, And when thou hast him by the amorous gills, Think on my vengeance.
b. with allusion to sense 2a: The flesh under the jaws and ears; esp. in phrases to be rosy about the gills, to look in good health; to be white, blue, yellow about the gills, to look dejected or in ill health; to turn red in the gills, to show signs of anger or indignation.
1626 Bacon Sylva §872 Anger+maketh both the Cheekes and the Gills Red. 1632 B. Jonson Magn. Lady i. i, He+draws all the parish wills, designs the legacies, and strokes the gills Of the chief mourners. 1681 Dryden Span. Friar ii. ii, He says he's but a friar, but he's big enough to be a pope; his gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock. 1798 C. Smith Young Philos. III. 274 ‘My dear Sir!’ replied Sir Appulby, in visible confusion, his fat gills quivering, and his swollen eye-lids twinkling [etc.]. 1812 Sporting Mag. XXXIX. 102 [He] grew white about the gills. 1816 Wolcot (P. Pindar) Wks. I. 8 Whether you look all rosy round the gills, Or hatchet-fac'd like starving cats so lean. 1842 C. Whitehead R. Savage (1845) II. viii. 277 You won't run away with her, I hope, and leave my old gills to be cuffed, will you? 1855 Thackeray Newcomes II. 58 He looks a little yellow about the gills. 1893 ‘Q.’ [Couch] Delect. Duchy 168 He+looked very yellow in the gills, though clearly convalescent. 1894 Du Maurier Trilby (1895) 236 How red and coarse their ears and gills and cheeks grew, as they fed!
I was surprised by how long the definition of gill was. Now as you will see below, it seems there was reference to every colour but green!Ah, RP, you clearly haven't heard about the late 20th century shade shift. Really famous in linguistics, it is!