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| | The Mavens' Word of the Day |
 | | The verb drop has been used to mean 'to fall exhausted, wounded, or dead' since the fourteenth century. |
 | | The expression to drop dead, used literally to mean 'to fall down dead', is first known in the mid nineteenth century, and seems to have been popular from then on, since a number of examples have been found thereafter. |
 | | "I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell down" ("Mark Twain," Life on the Mississippi (1883)); "I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either" (Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)). |
| www.randomhouse.com /wotd/index.pperl?date=19980204 (233 words) |
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