"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/02/18 (talking cold turkey)

We had a nice e-mail in from Mike and Liza, or Lee-za, I'm not sure which, but Lewin, so thank you to them. They say, "We are regular whatchers and were wondering the other day where going cold turkey comes from. Why turkey and not, say, broccoli?" The most popular suggestion that you will find  if you go looking for this is that it derives from the combination of goose bumps and what William Burroughs caled the cold burn that drug addicts suffer when they try to give up their habit. It sort of is linked in with the idea that there is a cold, clammy feel to the skin, really, rather like a turkey that's been plucked or even been refrigerated, so, all in all, very, very unpleasant. But there is a problem, slightly, with this theory, and that's because it ignores the fact that cold turkey was around quite for a few decades before this drug addiction sense came in. So if you look to a  cartoon in 1920, you will find someone saying, "Now, tell me on the square - can I get by with this for the wedding? Don't string me tell me cold turkey". And another one goes back earlier still to 1910, when somebody lost 5 000$ cold turkey, and it's use there in the sense of loosing it absolutely outright, so a sort of similar sense, if you like, to the way we use it today. But why turkey, which is Mike and Liza's question? Well, there is one theory attached to this, and it's quite a nice one, that it goes back to much a older idiom, 1800s we're talking now, in North America, and talking turkey. And to talk turkey you might thing is a bit like gobbledegook, as in talking is absolute rubbish, but it's the exact opposite - it means to talk frankly and directly. And there's a tale attached to it which invilves a Native American and a white American who went hunting together and desoded to divide the game. The white man was said to say, "I'll take the turkey and you take the buzzard, or you take the buzzard and I'll take the turkey", so trying to trick the Native American. And the Native American looked at him apparently very sternly and said, "Talk turkey to me", in other words, tell me straight. And that's possible that from that story, whether or not it's actually happened, the idea of talking frankly and plainly then went into talking cold turkey and than the idea that we have with drug addict today, so to follow a course with absolute directness, whatever the consequences. It's a very, very convoluted story but it might just be behind the idea of giving something upand the horrible consequences that come with it. It's worth it in the end, but it's not nice doing it.