Well attestedNamed from the place
Tennessee quick step
noun · first attested 1860s
Soldiers named the war's biggest killer after the hurried walk it forced on them.
Dysentery or severe diarrhea, in American Civil War soldiers' slang.
36.0000°N -86.0000°W · Q1509
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1860s
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Tennessee
- In English
Tennessee quick step
Camp sanitation made bowel disease more lethal than combat in the Civil War, and soldiers gave it a set of regional joke names: the Tennessee quick step, the Tennessee trot, the Virginia quickstep, and plainly the flux. The quickstep was a real marching step of about 110 paces a minute, which is the point of the joke. The term is now obsolete outside Civil War writing.
United States
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