I was drawn to the phrase “pass peach seeds” in Thomas Harris’s novel “The Silence of the Lambs,” which I started to read last month and from whose text I have posted several questions, including one relating to this passage:
“Don’t spill that (Coke mixed with Jack Daniel’s)” in here, “Jeff said.
“Don’t worry, Jeff” Mapp said. Quietly to Starling, “You should have
seen my man Jeff waiting for me outside the liquor store. He looked
like he was passing peach seeds.” When Mapp saw the whisky start to
work little, Mapp said, “How you doing, Starling?” -ibid.351.
Though I gather from the context that “pass peach seeds” means “avoid / duck out of an undesirable thing / matter”, I’m unable to find this phrase in the dictionaries I have at hand. Google Ngram doesn’t recognize this phrase either.
However, I found the following example of “pass peach seeds” in Yahoo Answers:
Will my dog pass this peach seed? – If it's whole – not likely. You
really ought to keep an eye on your dog and see how she does. If she
continues to eliminate and eat normally, she's going to be fine.
What is the exact meaning of “pass peach seeds”? Why should it be "peach seeds," not apple, pear or grape seeds? Is it a popular idiom, or just a one-off figurative expression used by the author? Would you show me another good example of employing this phrase?
Best Answer
To pass peach seeds is a more polite version of a country expression, to shit peach pits. Since peach pits are large, hard, and sharp at each end, passing them through one's anus would be exceedingly painful and would likely cause some damage requiring surgical repair.
The expression means something painful, and feared because it is painful.
I have heard this expression all my life. Although it is picturesque, I think it is also hyperbole, therefore a figurative expression. A peach pit would be likely to perforate some soft tissue in the gut long before it got to the anus to be passed.
Edited to answer a question from the comments: Where I am from will not answer your question as to where this expression is common. I heard it in Georgia, USA (nicknamed The Peach State) and in orchard areas of Iowa and Washington State. My husband, who grew up in Texas and Montana, also uses this expression.
To shit a brick as someone else said is a different phrase, one with equivalent crudity but without the witty image of the peach pit going through the digestive tract. A person may accidentally swallow a peach pit, but how is the brick going to get in there?