The New York Times article “In golf, moments good and bad are well remembered” (June 14) ends up with the following episode:
Jerry Kelly (PGA golfer) said that his steely memory of golf extended to his personal life, especially when driving.
"I remember all those people who have cut me off," Kelly said. "I try to stay ahead of everybody so that I don’t let them cut me off again, especially when I come back to the Northeast. I really get the juices flowing when I’m driving here."
What does “get the juices flow” when driving mean? Does it mean to get the thrills and spills?
There’s no entry for “get the juices flow” in English dictionaries at hand, nor Google Ngram shows any incidence of the phrase.
Is this an idiom, or just a casual turn of phrase? If it’s a not-unusual phrase, in what else instances can I use “get the juices flow”?
PS.
Someone placed “This question may have an answer here -Where did the "juices" in "creative juices" come from? on top of my question. It doesn’t. I read through the said question, and find no connection / answer to mine. My question has evidently nothing to do with “creative juice" asked in that particular question.
My question is simply what Jerry Kelly meant in his remark, which now I wrapped my brain after posting this question, and getting a lot of inputs from you.
Best Answer
‘Juices’ is a kind of slangy term that means ‘a person’s vitality or creative faculties’. The creative faculties are of course what is referenced in the expression mentioned in the question linked to by jwpat7 in the comment above; in this case, it’s the other meaning we’re looking for.
Since a person’s vitality is seen here as a kind of ‘juice’ (originally most likely referring on some level to bodily fluids: especially blood was, in Mediaeval times, often considered to be a source of energy, health, and vitality in humans), it makes sense that it should be set ‘flowing’, since that’s what liquids do.
This meaning is extended from the meaning the OED has as sense 2:
Obviously, if you think of it as being ultimately just a kind of euphemism for blood (and sweat and bile and all the other humours), getting it to flow, and flow faster especially, would be a sign of physical exertion or excitement: when we run, our blood actually flows faster, and our pulse increases.
The phrase is often also used in a sexual manner, where the reference is to the various kinds of sex-related bodily fluids that are released when people become aroused. Whether the sexual meaning came first or the exertion meaning came first (or whether they are really to be separated at all), I do not know; I cannot find any quotes for that. But it is clear that they are both in use.
In the quote from your NYT article, the meaning is definitely that of physical exertion–based excitement. He is comparing the ‘rush’ he gets from driving to a kind of race where he’s not going to let anyone pass him and be faster than him.