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.
