churchyard cough
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Suggesting that the afflicted person will soon pass away and be buried.
Noun[edit]
churchyard cough (plural churchyard coughs)
- (informal, medicine) A severe cough. (condition that causes one to cough, tendency to cough)
- 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 186:
- He was roused from his brief rest by a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to shake the whole system. It was one which in England is so simply, yet so emphatically, denominated a churchyard cough. It was hollow, like the echo of the grave.
Translations[edit]
a severe cough
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