blood sugar is our friend

[fox]

falling asleep at my desk, and freezing cold. eurgh. but, time to take my medicine, and enough dawdling about getting up to go get some tea (oh, i'll just do one more ______ -- an hour goes by), so up i get, hot tea, yogurt with which to take the medicine (raspberry today, a change of pace), and between the food and the hot drink and the actual movement of actual limbs, i no longer feel quite as ready to keel over.

so "keel" means "fall" -- but it must have a particular connotation that "fall" on its own doesn't have, or we wouldn't still use both words. and this verb "keel" must be related to the noun "keel", as in "keep an even keel" and "keel-haul" and "a keel and a hull and a deck and a sail, that's what a ship needs". i wonder what it is about the way we fall when we keel over that's associated with the keel on a ship. is keeling over, like, capsizing?

yes, this is precisely how i get.

Comments

[datlowen.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, I've always thought of "keeling over" as dying, not just falling, which is exactly what happens when your keel is over the rest of the boat--it's pretty much dead.

[fafou.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily, but then when keel over became an expression we didn't have the great shipbuilding techniques we have now (ya' know wide is better). I mean sunfish (a really small sailboat) can pretty much go upside down, but then right themselves, with little human involvement.