staggers

the staggers

1. informal A term for any disease in animals, especially horses or cattle, typified by a lack of coordination and stability while standing or walking. It looked like the poor horse might've been coming down with the staggers. It's probably a magnesium deficiency that's causing the staggers in your livestock.
2. slang Any state or instance of staggering or unsteadiness on one's feet. I got a blow to the head during the accident, and it gave me the staggers for the rest of the day. He always gets the staggers when he's had one too many drinks. At the top of the mountain I could see that Janet was getting the staggers from the altitude, so I told her to sit down and have a rest.
3. slang Any of the various neurological problems caused by decompression sickness (a condition known colloquially as "the bends"). When the diver first showed signs of the staggers, we thought it was just an inner ear infection, but it turns out he had the bends and died a few days later.
See also: stagger
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

staggers

1. n. liquor. She poured herself a huge glass of staggers and mumbled something about cough medicine.
2. and the staggers n. drunkenness; the delirium tremens. (Always with the in this sense.) He seems to have a little touch of the staggers.
See also: stagger
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • the staggers
  • two left feet
  • how-d'ye-do
  • flow
  • nummers
  • party and play
  • sweat
  • sweats
  • yes, sirree
  • nummy
References in periodicals archive
Effective magnesium supplementation is crucial to avoid staggers >
Staggers will be greater threat this spring: claim; DISEASE
The recently passed Staggers Rail Act should improve the regulatory climate for U.S.
Our guardedly optimistic forecast for the railroads under the provisions of the Staggers Act turned out to be quite an understatement.
This is not to say that there have not been contentious rate cases, controversial merger approvals, and attempts at legislating rail "reform." In fact, political pressure for new regulation currently seems at the greatest level since the Staggers Act was passed.
With the passage of the Staggers Act of 1980, there was widespread hope that removing the shackles of regulation would pull the industry back from the precipice.
The Staggers Act did allow regulatory relief to protect captive shippers, and thus was not total deregulation.
The Staggers Act, 30 years later: the authors of a 1981 article on railroad deregulation review their observations
(7) at the University of Maryland shows that screw stagger and partially filled channels are important parameters in polymer mixing as well as the factors mentioned previously.
It is shown, on the 0.8-inch-diameter screw extruders, that the effect of channel fill on dye distribution is larger than that of percent stagger. With the increase in the percent fill, the rate of dye distribution grows linearly (7).
a) Screw stagger b) Percent channel filled c) rpm d) Diameter of the screw
In order to give a clear view of different aspect of this problem, we interpret the results in terms of the investigated parameters, namely, screw stagger, percentage of channels filled, screw rpm, and screw diameter.
2) The effects of percent fill (P) and screw stagger (S) can not be interpreted separately because of the large S vs.
Scale-up rules for mixing in a non-intermeshing twin-screw extruder
Eblex beef scientist Dr Liz Genever said: "Grass staggers - hypomagnesaemia - are always a threat with lactating cows on early season ryegrass-based pastures, but they pose far more of a risk when stock grazing young grass are stressed by the sudden changes in spring weather that seem to be becoming more common these days.
The incidence of staggers varies widely, both between seasons and locations.
PREVENTION A 600kg cow needs up to 35g of magnesium in her diet every day to prevent staggers.
Fickle weather raises health risk for herds; Farming
As we stagger from "recovery" to "recovery," the zeitgeist is grungy in fashion as well as in the art world, where the hardass antimastery mastery of the '80s has been challenged, or rather has withered into the kinder, gentler, "pathetic esthetic" of the '90s.
Springtime for grunge