To be so offensive or disagreeable that one cannot swallow it. This expression is the modern version of stick in one’s gizzard, gullet, or crop, all referring to portions of an animal’s digestive system. Their figurative use dates from the late seventeenth century. Jonathan Swift recorded one in Polite Conversation (1738): “Don’t let that stick in your gizzard.” Dickens used still another in a letter in 1843: “Your dedication to Peel stuck in my throat.” More recently Martin Cruz Smith wrote, “Doesn’t it stick in your craw that you got absolutely nowhere in the investigation?” (Wolves Eat Dogs, 2004).