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A long drink of water

Posted by Smokey Stover on March 14, 2006

In Reply to: A long drink of water posted by Nijole on March 14, 2006

: A boy to some people appeared to be vaguely amusing and they called him "a long drink of water" or "a great stutteting dodo". Both phrases are not clear, especially the first.

From your description of this boy, I would say that he was tall, that he stuttered or stammered, and that someone thought he was stupid (dumb as a dodo).
The dodo, a bird just larger than a turkey, was first seen by Portugese sailors in 1507. By 1681 they were extinct, having all been killed by men and the animals they set loose on the island. The dodos, never having seen a predator before, were too "dumb" to defend themselves. Nowadays we think of the sailors and their employers as the stupid ones, but "dumb as a dodo" has stuck.

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