Cold turkey
Cold turkey
Di colpo
Di botto / Di brutto
Di colpo
Di botto / Di brutto
Meanings
Fig: to quit something abruptly
Examples
He has been smoking thirty cigarettes a day for ten years and when he tried to stop cold turkey, he went nuts
Ha fumato trenta sigarette al giorno per dieci anni e quando ha voluto smettere di colpo, ha cominciato a dare i numeriYou will not lose weight until you give up chocolate, and I suggest you go cold turkey
Non perderai peso finché non smetterai di mangiare tutto quel cioccolato, ma il mio consiglio è di non smettere di bruttoIt's not a fault of my own, I couldn't avoid it! The car in front of me stopped cold turkey and I rear-ended it
Non è solo colpa mia, non potevo farci niente! La macchina davanti a me ha frenato di colpo e io l'ho tamponataOrigin
The expression originates from the goose bumps and pallor which accompany withdrawal from narcotics or tobacco, as the skin resembles that of a cold plucked turkey.
The earliest reference to that is from the Canadian newspaper The Daily Colonist, October 1921: "Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they [drug addicts] are given what is called the 'cold turkey' treatment."
The 1936 edition of American Speech gave a definition of the term: "Cold turkey, treatment of addicts in institutions where they are taken off drugs suddenly without the tapering off which the addict always desires"