Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Talking turkey

This Thursday is the day in the U.S. when we give thanks and overdose on pumpkin pie and stuffed poultry. Hey, I'm talkin' turkey here. Which brings up the question (in my mind, anyway)... Where did the phrase talking turkey come from? And why turkey, of all things/birds?

Research time!
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According to the 1889 Americanisms, Old and New by Stephen Farmer (which is one of my favorite 19th-century references for old-timey phrases):

To talk turkey—To indulge in grandiloquent periods; to use high-sounding words, when plain English would do equally well or better. An allusion to the manner in which the male bird spreads and plumes itself.

This puzzled me a bit, as I would've defined it more along the lines of what appears in the 1997 The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer:

talk turkey—Speak plainly, get to the point... This expression allegedly comes from a tale about an Indian and a white man who hunted together and divided the game. When the white man said, "I'll take the turkey and you the buzzard, or you take the buzzard and I the turkey," the Indian replied, "Talk turkey to me." Whether or not this tale had a true basis, the term was recorded in its present meaning by about 1840.

So, does this mean that talking turkey could refer to either plain- or fancy-speechifying in the 19th century?? How confusing is that! (Especially for me, since my Silver Rush series is set in the 1880s. What would my poor characters think if one were to say to the other, "Let's talk turkey.")

An exploration of this etymological conundrum appears in an interesting post on the origin of the phrase on the site World Wide Words. The blogger/author, UK's Michael Quinion, notes:

[The phrase is] first recorded in 1824, but is probably much older; one suggestion is that it goes back as far as colonial times. What the explanations have in common is real turkeys.

But the meaning of the phrase seems to have shifted down the years. To start with it meant to speak agreeably, or to say pleasant things; nowadays it usually refers to speaking frankly, discussing hard facts, or getting down to serious business. The change seems to have happened because to "talk turkey" was augmented at some point in the nineteenth century to "talk cold turkey", with the modern meaning. In the course of time it was abbreviated again, with the shorter form keeping the newer meaning. (The other meaning of "cold turkey" is unrelated.)

So, there you go! Now you can talk turkey about talking turkey when you are at the Thanksgiving table.

Talk first, gobble later.
From "A natural history of birds : illustrated with a hundred and one copper plates, curiously engraven from the life v.2." (1734) By Albin, Eleazar; Derham, W. [CC BY 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons