"She threw up her hands and..."

I have always hated the phrase, "to throw up one's hands". In the course of the massive amounts of reading that I do, I run across said expression on occasion, and in my humble opinion, "on occasion" is far too frequently.

Am I the only one who envisions "throwing up" as in vomiting, instead of "raising in the air"? Here's what runs through my brain when I see, "And in desperation, she threw up her hands and screamed."

First, the character abruptly stops doing whatever she was doing before, with a look of confusion on her face. She begins to retch. At first it's just dry heaves, but you see her hands begin to jerk at the ends of her arms in time with the heaving. Eventually the poor woman's hands disappear into her body, only to re-appear in the form of vomit a few seconds later.

There the poor character is, looking with shock at her own hands, in a sad puddle of...you know. Makes you hope the character in question is a horrible antagonist. Maybe a home-wrecker or a terrorist mastermind. Oooo, or someone who kicks puppies. In that case I might not mind the hand-vomit as much.

Gross, right? So why does the literary world insist on continuing to use this horrid phrase? Might I suggest an alternative? Perhaps your character could "raise her hands in the air" or even just "throw her hands in the air" instead of throwing them up.

(are these lyrics going through your mind now, too? "Throw your hands in the air, shake your derrière. These three words when you're gettin' busy: Whoomp! They it its! Sing it!")

Ok. I guess that's all I have to say about that. Bye.