the.com/cough
your body's bouncer, hurling intruders out at near-hurricane speeds.
means To force air suddenly and noisily from your lungs, usually to clear your throat or airways of irritation, mucus, or something that doesn't belong there.
from From Middle English 'coughen,' echoing the older imitative root that gave us 'cough' as a sound made flesh — an onomatopoeia, a word that simply mimics the rough hack of the throat. It's a cousin of Dutch 'kuchen' and German 'keuchen' (to gasp or wheeze), all of them sprung from the same Germanic instinct to spell out a noise the body makes without asking permission.
- velocity
- droplets can exit faster than 50 mph
- reflex hub
- controlled by the brainstem, not choice
- contagion cloud
- spreads particles up to 20 feet
- placebo power
- sugar syrups soothe coughs surprisingly well
- odd trigger
- some people cough when ears get tickled
whooping cough — bacterial disease caused by bordetella pertussis, killed thousands annually before vaccines
cough of tuberculosis — chronic symptom in tb patients, spreads airborne, historically called consumption
covid-19 dry cough — distinctive symptom of sars-cov-2 infection, appeared 2020 pandemic