60 Words for Vomit
I’ve heard that the Inuit use at least 53 words to describe snow. Arabs have dozens of ways to talk about love. And apparently, Americans have taken fancy with words of throwing up.
We were out for dinner tonight at a sweet Mexican restaurant. My boyfriend, my writing friend, and two friends from Paris were with me. Someone ordered a massive burrito. I stuck with a salmon tartare. We weren’t planning to drink until my Paris friends ordered shots. Within a minute, our waitress came out with amber-colored glasses. There a shortage of table salt in the kitchen. She served rock salt instead. We grabbed the limes, licked our thumbs, and drank tequila together. Then, we ordered again. And then, someone ordered a third round.
My boyfriend Nathan loosened up. He told us about the last time he got drunk. The night after he broke up with his ex, he went to a rum bar. He drank so much rum that he came home, showered, and fell asleep standing under the water. In the time between the bar and getting to bed, he vomited everything out. His food, the flavored rums, and all the memories and stories of his ex came up. He was sick for six hours before he fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke up feeling like new. He didn’t have a hangover or any residue from the night before.
As he finished his story, the discussion at dinner segued into all the different words for vomit. I searched it up, and found 60 ways to say the same thing.
Throwing Up
Regurgitating
Puking
Heaving
Retching
Barfing
Upchucking
Spewing
Disgorging
Ejecting
Gagging
Chundering
Hurling
Tossing
Blowing chunks
Spitting up
Purging
Expelling
Getting sick
Ralphing
Praying to the porcelain god
Losing lunch
Technicolor yawn
Casting up one's accounts
Driving the porcelain bus
Vomming
Liquid laughing
Being sick
Tossing cookies
Doing the technicolor burp
Yakking
Booting
Woofing
Reverse eating
Tossing your tacos
Spewing chunks
Having a Roman incident
Pavement pizza delivery
Mouth vomiting
Tummy rebelling
Gut spill
Regurgitative explosion
Stomach surfacing
Bile broadcast
Belly bomb
Gastric gush
Lunch launch
Digestive distress
Tossing the salad
Abdominal uproar
Chumming the waters
Exorcizing the stomach
Returning the stomach contents
Blowfish burp
Gastric geyser
Throwing a tummy tantrum
Esophageal exodus
Nausea narrative
Internal upheaval
Stomach storytelling
My favorite from this list is number 21. Who thought of that? Praying to the porcelain god. It sounds like a poem; one that many of us have experienced. I wonder though: could our prayers be answered without worshiping a bottle? Maybe I need another shot of tequila to find out.
There's another one : Speaking to the white telephone... ;)
Ha! A fun read, especially from the perspective of having been there.
Another interesting term that comes up in plant medicine circles is "getting well" which perhaps makes sense in the context of the rum story.