“Chunder” and 15 Other Beautiful Ways To Say “Lose Your Lunch”

By Paul Jury on September 28th, 2009

illustration-man-sick-toil-1

At our senior year New Year’s Eve party, an occasion at which all high school seniors test and surpass their alcohol limits, my friend Tim spawned one of the most outstanding vomits I’ve ever heard of.

Tim was taking a shot of grocery-store plastic-bottle-brand vodka when he felt the shiver of Captain Ralph wash over him. Making a rush for the bathroom, he discovered it to be closed and locked, occupied by a more experienced drinker who’d gotten their yakking started sooner. Too far away to make it to another toilet, Tim did what anyone would do: he simply barfed on the bathroom door. But not on just any part of the door – Tim managed, with unimaginable velocity and volume, to barf not only on the entire top half of the bathroom door and door frame, but even some onto the wall and ceiling above the door. Eye-witnesses said it was one of the most amazing things they’d ever seen, like a Bellagio fountain of chuck rocketing out of Tim’s mouth and onto every surface in front of, above, and around him. It was here that I was first introduced to the term “chunder”

If you search online, there are literally thousands of synonyms for “throw up,” but most of them just don’t capture the epic picture of violently spewing one’s breakfast as well as this “chunder”. An apparent portmanteau of the works “Chuck” and “Thunder”, this magical phrase really summons the image of a lightening bolt of vomit, rocketing out of your mouth with enough force to knock down walls and break limbs off trees. I love it. Since that New Year’s party, I have become very selective about the ways I describe someone getting sick, limiting my choice of words to a select echelon of terms that I feel adequately portray both the vividness and hilarity of watching your buddy blow his beans after one too many Jaeger bombs. And so, because it’s late and it’s Tim’s birthday today, here are the best 15 ways to say “get sick” (besides chunder, of course):