Cackle-bladder
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A bladder containing (real or fake) blood, used to fake someone's death or injury, as in espionage or confidence tricks where a person is made to think that he is an accessory to murder.
"1951 June 16, Racket Squad (television review), in The Billboard, page 8, It tells you how they work on the mark's own larcenous cravings for a killing, how they build him up to betting his entire stake — and then "put the chill on" via the "cackle bladder" routine, a prop murder, so named because originally the "corpse" bit on a chicken bladder and drenched himself in chicken blood."
Example
More examples"1951 June 16, Racket Squad (television review), in The Billboard, page 8, It tells you how they work on the mark's own larcenous cravings for a killing, how they build him up to betting his entire stake — and then "put the chill on" via the "cackle bladder" routine, a prop murder, so named because originally the "corpse" bit on a chicken bladder and drenched himself in chicken blood."
Etymology
From cackle + bladder, because originally chicken blood was used.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.