Why do we get hiccups?

KIWI IN OZ

hiccoughs are caused by the involuntary spasm of the diaphragm muscles. many remedies will be touted from holding ones breath to drinking water upside down..... I find the most effective way is to concentrate on breathing evenly and steadily in through the nose and out through the mouth ignoring the hics until such time as the diaphragm is again under control. May 09 03, 2:02 AM

Kainantu

Hiccups are actually a spasm of the diaphragm, a sheet of muscle that lies between the chest and the abdomen. The spasm forces air out of the lungs, resulting in that familiar sound. Hiccups happen when the diaphragm gets irritated, often caused by eating and drinking too fast. There are lots of theories on how to get rid of hiccups, but one of the best remedies is simply holding your breath. This will relax the diaphragm and bring it back to normal. http://goodmedicine.ninemsn.com.au/goodmedicine/factsheets/db/general/diseases/206.asp http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec96/833953699.Me.r.html May 09 03, 2:03 AM

Friar Tuck

We do not get hiccups in our family as we have always known them as hiccoughs, which prompted me to look up the various spellings. It is onomatopoeic. Preceded by the French form hoquet, the word was originally spelled hiquet, hicket, hickot, hickock, or even hitchcock (unrelated to the surname Hitchcock, which means nothing more than 'little Richard'). By the late 16th century 'hiccup' was the established spelling. However, hiccup was also known as a drunken man's cough, and so in the 17th century it became 'hiccough,' without a change in pronunciation. That spelling became so prevalent that in his dictionary Samuel Johnson incorrectly wrote that 'hickup' was a corrupted form of 'hiccough.' http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7068/1326 May 09 03, 12:00 PM

Friar Tuck

Part 2 Francis Bacon (1626) affords the first example of 'hiccough' in the Oxford English Dictionary, writing that it had been 'observed by the Ancients, that Sneezing doth cease the Hiccough.' And indeed it had. Plato described the treatment of hiccupping in his Symposium. Pausanius pauses (the pun is Plato's), giving way to Aris-tophanes, who is made to pause in his turn, being afflicted with hiccups. The physician Eryximachus, next in turn, agrees to speak instead, and suggests that Aristophanes should first hold his breath, then gargle with a little water, and finally tickle his nose in order to sneeze (advice also given by Hippocrates in his Aphorisms). Later Aristophanes reports that sneezing finally worked: 'I wonder,' he says, 'whether the harmony of the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the sneezing than I was cured.' Plato kindly inflicted only hiccups on Aristophanes, who in his plays had afflicted others with rather more scatological forms of wind disturbance. The Greek word (lambda)%B5(nu)(xi) (lynx), a hiccup, also meant a convulsive sob, a conjunction that is found in many other languages: Latin singultus (also the technical medical term, infrequently used), Italian singhiozzo, Portuguese soluco, and German {Schlucken;} Spanish hipo and Russian ikota. Before hiccup was invented the English word was yex or yox, which also meant to hiccup or sob, from the Old English word geocsian, meaning to sob, ultimately from the Latin oscitare, to gape. The miller in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale gets drunk and yexes through his nose. May 09 03, 12:00 PM