• Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      1 month 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.

        • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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          1 month 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.”