Yesterday I was reading this text with a student. It is a perfectly serious science article from the BBC and it contains the following:
The Imperial [College London] team also carried out mouse studies which found levels of SGK1 in the womb lining decline during the window of time during which they can fall pregnant.
My student was somewhat surprised by the phrase fall pregnant. I told her that it is a perfectly normal colloquial expression. Then I went on to say that you could also fall ill and fall in love. Well, she could see some sense in both of those but what does falling have to do with becoming pregnant?
What indeed? The COED has
4 pass into a specified state. Ø (fall to doing something) begin to do something.
which meets the case but apart from the construction with a gerund or the absolute from ‘fall to’ I can only think of the three expressions I have mentioned, with adjective or adverb complement.
The OED offers no explanation. Under fall it has
22. a.III.22.a In moral sense: To yield to temptation, to sin; esp. of a woman: To surrender her chastity.
A fallen woman? Well yes, but it sounds rather archaic these days.
b.III.22.b To become pregnant.
1722 Session Bk. Penninghame (1933) I. 479 The said‥Jannet‥confessed that she fell with child and parted with it in May last.1891 Farmer Slang II. 370/2 Fall (venery), to conceive. 1957 Young & Willmott in ‘C. H. Rolph’ Human Sum vii. 129 The expression a woman uses when she is pregnant. She says she has ‘fallen’. ‘We had been married eight months before I fell.’
Are these normal colloquial expressions or do they bear a tinge of moral judgement? Even in the case of the unfortunate Jannet there is no clear moral opprobrium in the wording itself, and the last example clearly implies that the falling was welcome.
And to return to our laboratory mice, I am sure that there was no moral implication in saying that they fell pregnant.
