My mother used to get hiccups quite frequently. They were not the subtle, silent kind--the ones that would go unnoticed save for a telltale twitch of the shoulders or heave of the chest. No, she got LOUD hiccups, the kind that shatter a quiet evening at home with an ear-warping

HYULLLK!

...or something like that. Onomatopoeia doesn't work here; the English language doesn't contain the phonemes for the sounds she made. She's also easily embarrassed, so she'd blush. So you'd have this purple-faced woman (who is also, I might add, six feet tall) making loud

hic-URRRLP!

sounds. Thus, over the years, we've managed to accumulate several excellent hiccup cures. I imagine that these are largely idiosyncratic, but maybe they'll work for you, too. Here they are:

  • Vinegar. Yuck. It's gross and acidic, and it doesn't always work. In an emergency, though (e.g. you have to go play clarinet in two minutes), you might want to give it a try.
  • Tabasco, horseradish, or any other hot sauce. Not everyone can handle hot sauce--my mom can't--nor does this remedy work every time. So we'll move on to the best remedy of all...
  • Peanut butter. Once upon a time, my mom got hiccups while I was at a piano lesson. A sip from her water bottle didn't help, and she actually got up to leave so she wouldn't disrupt my lesson. My piano teacher waved my mother back to her seat, ran out of the room, then ran back with a spoonful of peanut butter. My mom swallowed it--and her hiccups vanished. Instantly. My mother uses this one exclusively. I've tried it myself. It works every single time.

There you go. Don't ask me why it works, but it does. If peanut butter can cure my mom's hiccups, it can certainly cure yours.