meaning - Etymology of a strange sense of "kick", as in, "I'm on a Sailor Moon kick right now"


[I'm not really on a Sailor Moon kick. ^_^] Still, the use of the word kick to denote the feeling of a "current or temporary pleasure" is pretty strange, isn't it? How did it evolve from its original root, which I presume is the sense of striking something with the foot, to that meaning? My question is: Can anyone draw a plausible pathway from the most original meaning to this colloquial meaning of kick?


EDIT: Er, my example sentence didn't say, I get a kick out of Sailor Moon. It said, I'm on a Sailor Moon kick. I think these senses are very distinguishable, and thus the answers I've received thus far strike me as wrong.



Answer



There's a reasonable progression from "getting a kick out of something" to "being on a Sailor Moon kick." This is through references to alcohol or drugs; here being on a kick could mean an extended period of using alcohol or drugs.


From James Jones' Here to Eternity (1951):



He had seen members of the Canned Heat Brigade stay on a kick like this for years. ... And they didnt even have whiskey; all they had had was canned heat from Woolworth's that they had to strain the alcohol out of the paraffin through a handkerchief and then strain the alky through a piece of stale bread.



This reference is right around the time when "being on an xxxxx kick" starts showing up in Google books searches.


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