lights en · NOUN · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- /laɪts/
- (US) audio
Meanings
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(form-of, plural) plural of light
form of light
He often gazes out at the distant lights across the bay.
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(plural, plural-only) The lungs, now chiefly of an animal (being lighter than adjacent parts).
One subscriber asks what food will induce fowls to lay ; another asks about scrap cake ; another about hogs’ lights and similar offal. To those we would say : It is the nature of fowls in good health to lay, and they can not help it—the eggs will come. Scanty fare will reduce their laying propensity, and on very short commons, eggs cease altogether. Rich food promotes the tendency ; certain seeds, like buckwheat, sunflower and hemp seeds[,] increase it, and meat of any kind does the same. All this, however, forces the fowl into an unnatural state, and ordinarily shortens her life. The eggs, besides, have often a poor flavor. Occasional feedings of fresh meat, like the lights of hogs chopped fine, are very good in winter when the fowls find no insect food. They need, besides, hearty food in cold weather, especially if they are not kept in warm houses. In very cold weather, hens running about and roosting in exposed places, will not lay, though richly fed ; their food goes to keeping them warm.—Southern Farmer.
1874 March 14, “Meat for Fowls to Make them Lay [quoted from Southern Farmer]”, in The Rural Carolinian, volume 5, number 6, Charleston, South Carolina, page 311:But forst him gape and gaspe, with dread aghast, / As if his lungs and lites were nigh asunder brast.
1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:A hog's lights (or lungs), spleen, and brain found their way into dishes, as did the heart, liver, kidneys, and head, all considered delicacies. Even the feet, ears, and tail were eaten. The hooves were boiled to make glue.
2013, Dean King, The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story, Little, Brown, →ISBN:[…] / hard puffing breasts and dance-o'erwearied lungs. / And truly had the crier will'd to shout / The doughty Piper's name through polish's trump, / His breath had not suffic'd to twang it out, / So did the poor man's lights puff, pant, and jump: / Wherefore to rest them from that dancing-bout, / […]
1838, William Tennant, Anster fair, a poem, page 22:a stew of hogs' lights and potatoes
Deriveds
lights out · rising of the lights · punch someone's lights out · according to one's lights · lights-out · by one's lights