APAD: The living daylights

Meaning:

    To beat the living daylights out of someone is to beat them severely, to the

    point where they lose consciousness.

 

Background:

   We don't know the precise first use of the expression `beat the living

   daylights out of' but we can say that it originated in the USA in the late

   19th century as a variant of earlier similar expressions.

 

   The release of the 1987 film The Living Daylights, the fifteenth in the James

   Bond series, reawakened usage of this old phrase. When we refer to someone

   having the living daylights beaten, scared, or knocked out of them, we just

   mean that they have been badly beaten or scared, or knocked unconscious. The

   imagery is of someone being so discomfited as to lose the power of sight.

   Like similar examples, such as `beat the stuffing out of', the phrase is

   often used with an air of exaggeration and not always meant to be taken

   literally.

   ...

 

   The 20th century version of the phrase is the American `punch someone's

   lights out'. The precursor to this form of the phrase was a widely syndicated

   newspaper report of the 1956 fight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Carl (Bobo)

   Olson:

 

     "Robinson's knockout punch turned out the lights for Bobo in the second

     round."

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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I've never been knocked out, thank God, but choking one's lights out is easy.

The two carotid arteries, carrying oxygen to the head and running just beneath

the skin along the neck, could be shut off with two fingers and darkness would

fall before the eyes within 10 secs. Most chokeholds via an arm or the legs form

a 'V' where the lines meet under the chin and squeeze in from both sides to

block the arteries. When it's done properly, the victim feels a fuzzy, snug

pressure instead of pain before keeling over. It has happened to me at least

four times over four years. Fortunately, each time my partner let go right away

and I came to.