The phrase, ';The rabbit died,'; came to be a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test in the late 1920 and early 1930s. Around 1927 it was discovered that if you injected the urine of a pregnant woman into a rabbit, there would be corpora hemorrhagica in the ovaries of the rabbit. These bulging masses on the ovaries could not be seen with out killing the rabbit to inspect the ovaries, so invariably, every rabbit died, even if the woman wasn't pregnant.What does it mean when someone says ';the rabbit died';?
It means the person is pregnant. The reference is to a pregnancy test. (I'm not sure of the details, but it's something like exposing the rabbit's ovaries to the woman's urine or some such.) But in order to do the test, you have to kill the rabbit. The reasoning gets a bit specious from a strict logic point of view, but basically runs: we had to kill a rabbit to run a test to see if you were pregnant, which we wouldn't have had to to do if we knew you weren't pregnant.
Pregnant. Refers to the old type of pregnancy test.
Urine was collected from the woman and injected into the rabbit. The rabbit was killed and it's ovaries were examined.
Rabbit always died but there it is.
It means a female who thinks she might be pregnant and went to a doctor to find out. Back then, whenever it was, doctors sent a sample of the females 'whatever' and sent it to a lab where the specimen was introduced to the rabbit's system. If it died, she was pregnant. If it lived, she wasn't.
...that person is pregnant.
The test for pregnancy involved injecting the ';sample'; into a rabbit. If the rabbit died, the test was positive for pregnancy.
It used to be that to do a pregnancy test they used the ovaries of a rabbit ... not sure exactly of the details, just the test was done on a rabbit.
Don't know if those tests were always fatal to the rabbit or not.. but that phrase was one way of saying a woman was pregnant.
The way pregnancy tests were done in the ';olden days'; they would take some blood from the female and inject it into a rabbit, if the rabbit died, the woman was pregnant. Thank God for modern technology!
its a secret KGB code, and it means you've been selected for special service
you won't be able to understand it until you're older
as for the meaning of it, well, i could tell you, but i would have to kill you
just bide your time, we will be in touch.
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