"To the gills" - where did it come from?

Regarding Letsrun, I believe the phrase started being used here when Rashid Ramzi won the double gold (800/1500) in 2005 WC, along with the phrase "too juiced to lose".

The Norweigen salmon is doped to the gills

This is close to the truth. It was first used by Spanish people here in reference to El G. They would accuse somebody of beng 'doped to El G levels', which in Spanish is 'dopado a niveles de El G'. But because their English wasn't so good, they would come out with things like - "That Ramzi - he doped to the El G liveles." It gradually became altered by other posters to "Ramzi is doped to the gills".

Have you seen Carl Lewis in his prime? His cheeks look like a blowfish!

It comes from the French language.

I'll repeat my answer form that older thread.

There was this guy, Jonathon Gill, who served over 5 years in prison in the early 2000's.
He made a lot of national headlines saying that he was going to the Olympics in the 1500.
But Gill must have been smoking dope if he thought he could really do that.
So people living in this fantasy world are doped to the Gills.

être bourré jusqu'à la gueule?

OK

But originally from filling a fish with other food?

I have been hearing this ages ago, even before internet.

Yes, a lot of these phrases go back a long way and who knows where they really originally came from in a way (as the phrases get passed around between places and change). But with regard to athletics, it sounds like the article in The Sporting News may have introduced the phrase!

In fishing competitions in the past people injected them with mercury to make them weigh more, so they were doped to the gills. Could be in relation to that. It just means they're packed full of something up to the gills, which is basically the neck of the fish

Surprisingly interesting thread. I assumed it was a metaphor for fish swimming in liquid peds. Kind of referencing the sheer volume of peds. Not even sure where/why I came up with this idea

At this point I don’t even know how you come up with this stuff.

It doesn’t even come from letsrun and was used long before that. “To the gills” means “Entirely or extremely, to the greatest degree possible”, referring to a fish being stuffed, and has nothing to do with « El G liveles ».

It just means "completely full to the brim" or "stuffed with" something. Originally food but also other things (metaphorically). In German they say "my nose is full!" when they are sick and tired of something (or "fed up").

Here is the citation from Dictionary.com.

This. I can recall people saying they were "stuffed to the gills" after a big meal, long before the internet. It's just been adapted here to mean someone being full of dope.

And here we are on another episode of Letsrun etymology... interesting. Full series when?

Still a good one!

I'll repeat mine. At this point, I have no idea where I got it, and I'm too lazy to check.

It comes from the phrase "stuffed to the gills" which means "so full, you can't eat any more." This seems to have come from the fact that when you stuff a fish for cooking, you fill it all the way to the gills.

In the early 20th century, "stuffed to the gills" had morphed into "soused to the gills," which meant "as drunk as could be." By the 1940s, this had morphed into "doped to the gills," which meant "as stoned as could be."

"To the gills" made it to athletics by 1976, when The Sporting News said that an East German shot-putter was "pumped to the gills" with drugs. The title of the article has a strangely contemporary ring to it: "Steroids Called Best Friends for Olympians."

PS My favorite article from that era is of course, "Steroids: Breakfast of Champions" by the editor of TFN.

All these etymologies either give no evidence, or cite the earliest usage they can find as evidence. But that doesn't mean it was where it came from! Most old stuff is long gone.

And so therefore it is possible that "to the gills" was given to us directly by aliens from outer space. Who were literally doping people to literal gills in their cruel experiments. Maybe.