Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 May 27

= May 27 =

"A rabbit ran up my back"
This saying is synomynous with "a shiver up the spine". How common is it and does it occur in any literature? déhanchements (talk) 03:56, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * It's not an expression that I've heard before, and Google Books finds only one example of its use: a novel called One in the hand by Richard Tillman and published in 2003. I expect there are other instances that Google doesn't find for me, but the expression doesn't seem to be very common.   Dbfirs  07:12, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I found that "a rabbit [or goose] walked/ran over my grave" is alternative version of "someone walked on my grave" - see here, or a discussion here. Maybe the "rabbit ran up my back" version (which I've never heard) is a corruption of that. Alternatively, it might be a translation of an idiom in another language, but I can't find anything to justify that. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it was being chased by the ferret in the trousers.--Shantavira|feed me 09:39, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the bee in my bonnet. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:18, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Which was eaten by a bat in my belfry {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.2.132 (talk) 09:16, 28 May 2019 (UTC).