kill the rabbit

English dictionary entry

Meanings

verb
  1. To get a positive test result from an old-fashioned pregnancy test.

Pronunciation

En-au-kill the rabbit.ogg

Word forms

kill the rabbit kills the rabbit killing the rabbit killed the rabbit

Etymology

Before the days of instant pregnancy tests, a woman's sample was injected into a rabbit. There were several varieties of tests; one allegedly would kill the rabbit if the pregnancy hormone was present in the sample (most accounts indicate the rabbit was killed and dissected either way.)

Related words

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.