Where does “頬が落ちる” come from?

頬が落ちる (Japanese) comes from Japanese 頬, from Japanese 列, from Middle Chinese 列.

頬が落ちる (Japanese): find something so tasty that one's cheeks fall

Definitions

  1. find something so tasty that one's cheeks fall

Ancestry of “頬が落ちる”, step by step

頬が落ちる traces back through 3 separate lines of ancestry.

via Japanese 頬

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Japanese頬cheek; the cheeks; the face
2Japanese列line, row; a column of a matrix
3Middle Chinese列—

via Japanese が

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1JapaneseがIndicates the subject of a sentence; conjunction;...
2Finnish-nkaForms nouns, mainly bird names (in dialects) and some toponyms

via Japanese 落ちる

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1Japanese落ちるto fall; to go down; to trip
2Old Japanese落つto fall
Every word from Middle Chinese 列 →Every word from Japanese 列 →Every word from Japanese 頬 →