Talking turkey

Posted by ESC on December 24, 1999

In Reply to: Phrase not found in your list posted by Roger Vick on December 24, 1999

: "Let's talk turkey." My understanding is that this phrase is synonymous with "Getting down to brass tacks." Comments?

TALKING TURKEY -- "Listening to America" by Stuart Berg Flexner (1982, Simon and Schuster) has a big section on "turkey" including why turkey is called turkey. ".Our North American bird was erroneously named 'turkey' by European explorers as early as 1587, in confusion with the European turkey cock, a completely different bird.Other stories, that our word turkey comes from some Indian word for it, or from the doctor on Columbus' ship shouting 'Tukki!' (Hebrew for 'big bird') when he first saw one, are not convincing." But getting back to your question: "To talk turkey meant to speak plainly by 1830 (turkey gobbling was a distinct, natural sound on frontier farms) and the expression soon became 'to talk cold turkey'; hence 'cold turkey' came to mean cold facts, unpleasant truths. By the 1940s 'cold turkey' was a drug addict's term for a sudden and complete withdrawal from drugs (reinforced by the addict's goose bumps, resembling uncooked turkey skin)..."