• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    124 months ago

    Holy shit. I thought I was being witty using that idiom instead of screwed the pooch. TIL it’s already a thing, moreover the origin story of screwed the pooch.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      24 months ago

      The origin doesn’t include actually having sex with a dog though. “Fuck the dog” was just an expression for being lazy and “screw the pooch” simply makes it more palatable.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          14 months ago

          Whether the action was feeding, walking, or fornicating, though, all of these early examples were used to mean “to loaf around” or “to waste time” (dogs have often been associated with laziness, as in the expression “dogging it”). Later on, possibly around World War II, “fucking the dog” and its euphemistic equivalents took on a secondary meaning of “blundering.”

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              14 months ago

              I know what fuck means too. Read the first sentence again… “all these early examples” are expressions referring to being lazy, with later meaning to include blunders. It was never actually an expression that suggested someone was fucking a dog or a degenerate, but instead just a vulgar expression of someone being lazy.