Shot in the arm

Posted by Victoria S Dennis December 19, 2005In reply to Shot in the arm posted by Bruce Kahl on December 19, 2005

What does shot in the arm mean?

A shot in the arm is to be invigorated, stimulated.
Probably from a medical background. Maybe vitamins were once injected into someone giving that someone a much needed boost.

It's not quite as respectable as that. It was coined in America in the 1920s when both recreational drug-taking and experimental medical treatments (e,g, monkey-gland extracts for pepping up one's sexual performance were quite fashionable among the avant-garde, and I'm afraid that the "shot" probably contained something rather stronger than vitamins.