Montezuma's revenge

alternative Moctezuma’s revenge

1. euphemistichumorousuncountableDiarrhea experienced by tourists after drinking water or eating food in Mexico as a result of a microorganism to which native Mexicans are immune.First known use 1962

   We warily sipped the lemonade, knowingly flirting with the tourist stomach disorder known here as Moctezuma's revenge.

   2010, George Ann Huck, Jann E. Freed, Women of Yucatán: Thirty Who Dare to Change Their World, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 18

   4 more examples

   Montezuma's Revenge, everybody knows, is the persistent intestinal illness that spoils the good humour of tourists in the tropics. Could there be a Montezuma's Revenge of the soul? There could. We caught it.

   1994, John-Claude Guillebaud, “Montezuma’s Revenge”, in John Simmons, transl., Return to Vietnam, London; New York, N.Y.: Verso Books, →ISBN, page 112

   There's a lot of flu bugs floating around. I think it is commendable that he thought enough of his fellow senators to keep his diseases to himself. I don't know what he had, but I suspect it was Montezuma's Revenge. (Mexico is the only country in the world where the expression "Royal Flush" has nothing to do with playing cards.)

   1999, Jim Foster, “Picking on Senator Going Too Far”, in I Hate to Complain, but …: A Collection of Humorous Something-or-others, Toronto, Ont.; Headington, Oxford; Tonawanda, N.Y.: Hounslow Press, Dundurn Press, →ISBN, page 19

   President Jimmy Carter arrived in Mexico City for a state visit on February 14, 1979, and proceeded to recall for his hosts a previous encounter with Mexican culture, decades earlier as a naval officer, in which he had contracted what he described as "Montezuma's revenge." This indelicate reference to tourist's diarrhea became something of an international incident; Mexican Preident José López Portillo insisted that his country be treated with respect, while the local press denounced the remark as a "typical Yankee slur."

   2004, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “From “Montezuma’s Revenge” to “Mexican Truffles”: Culinary Tourism across the Rio Grande”, in Lucy M. Long, editor, Culinary Tourism (Material Worlds), Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 76

   When we were together in Mexico in the early seventies, she came down with a bad case of Moctezuma's revenge, complaining that she'd never been sick to her stomach before.

   2014, M. I. Lastman, “Answers”, in Rocky Mountain Locust: Opus I, Trio: A Novel, Victoria, B.C.: FriesenPress, →ISBN, part 1 (Jim), page 32

   Synonyms: Aztec two-step