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debdestiny56
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 07:05
A Trivia question today was - "To be completely dead is to be as dead as a" --- answers included dormouse, doornail and others, it may be a generation gap thing but I've always said (along with others in my age group) "as dead as a doormat" which wasn't eve a choice. The answer was "doornail" - what do others think? I suppose they're both as dead as each other!!!!
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Quizzard
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 08:06
Hello Debdestiny56. I googled 'dead as a ...' and of the four options given, doornail was the only one to come up in any significant numbers. Apparently, the expression dates back to the 14th century and was later used by Shakespeare in Henry IV. Google brought up 118,000 references for 'dead as a doornail', but only 246 for 'dead as a doormat'.
However, if a doormat had been one of the four choices, I would take that number as enough to cause confusion and change the question. Instead, I've altered the dormouse option because that scored 339 references.
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Lakedraxis
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 09:10
I have always said 'doornail' .... :)
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CalypsoBelle
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 09:25
I've always used "as dead as a dodo".
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carol
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 09:59
Im a Kiwi in Aussie and use "Dodo, Hubby an aussie says "Doornail".
Do you think Dodo is a kiwi saying
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CalypsoBelle
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 10:55
Don't think so carol, I found the following on this English web site: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/38900.html
"Lewis Carroll used the Dodo as a character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and it was the popularity of this book that lead to the widespread use of the phrase 'as dead as a dodo'. There are citings of the phrases 'as rare as the dodo' in the 1860s and in the 1870s we find 'as extinct as a dodo'. The earliest record I can find of 'as dead as a dodo' is a reprint of a story from a Liverpool newspaper in the Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, May 1891: "After the next general election Mr. Parnell will have only four followers. Except as a private member of Parliament he is as dead as a dodo."
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Mum of 5
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 17:20
My immediate response would have been dodo (and i'm an aussie), but on reading the options, doornail is the one that would have jumped out at me. Don't know that i've heard doormat used in that context
Cheers
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Belwin
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# Posted: 29 Aug 2008 17:43
Dodo for me. Doornail doesn't seem quite right, as it was never alive to begin with.
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stantheman
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# Posted: 30 Aug 2008 06:03
I've only heard "as dead as a dodo", and don't remember hearing any of the choices offered.
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annes
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# Posted: 31 Aug 2008 01:28
I have only heard as dead as a doornail,
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mumerts
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# Posted: 31 Aug 2008 13:48
I too am from NZ...A Kiwi!... and all I ever heard over here is "Dead as a Dodo."
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