from guzzle to the zatch

B

burkuu

Senior Member
Istanbul
turkish
Hello

Does anybody know what "from guzzle to the zatch" means?

'...in a single stroke he cut the carcass from the guzzle to the zatch'

I couldn't find a proper meaning for guzzle and zatch

Thanks in advance
Burcu
 
    • Guzzle is a dialect word for throat (or possibly mouth) and zatch is a vulgar word for the buttocks or the female genitalia (also the sex act), so it means the entire torso is slit open from one orifice to the other.
     
    The phrase is "from guggle to zatch". The phrase is made of two nonsense words created by James Thurber in his delightful fairy tale book The Thirteen Clocks; the warning is given that evil duke will slit a potential victim "from your guggle to your zatch", and then have the victim's body fed to the castle geese.
     
    I think it may be going too far to say that Thurber invented these words. The OED cites a letter of E. B. White as its first quotation. Interestingly, this letter was from the same year as The Thirteen Clocks, and Thurber was an admirer of White; so who knows? The dictionary also suggests an etymology: a corruption of "satchel", an old slang term for the same thing (although of course, we don't know exactly what "thing" Thurber was referring to).

    Guzzle seems too obvious for anyone to claim as an invention, not to mention the fact that it had been used to mean throat in the 17th c.

    I have nothing against Thurber, of course. In fact I intend to dig out my copy of The Thirteen Clocks at the weekend and re-read it.
     
    Matching Mole said:
    I think it may be going too far to say that Thurber invented these words. The OED cites a letter of E. B. White as its first quotation. Interestingly, this letter was from the same year as The Thirteen Clocks, and Thurber was an admirer of White; so who knows?
    Click to expand...
    It might also be said that White was an admirer of Thurber; the two were friends from the 1920's, when both were members of the staff of the New Yorker.

    Guzzle seems too obvious for anyone to claim as an invention, not to mention the fact that it had been used to mean throat in the 17th c.
    Click to expand...
    "Guzzle" might be obvious, but the word that is usually paired with "zatch" is guggle, not guzzle.
     
    The OED has "guggle" as slang/dialect for windpipe with quotations from 1680 and 1896; it also gives an obsolete meaning of epiglottis with a quotation from 1688.

    I've never read The Thirteen Clocks: clearly I should!
     
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