Timeline for Is 'I f*cked the dog' an actual idiom and are there alternatives
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 30, 2016 at 1:16 | comment | added | David | "And what's that called?" ... "The aristocrats!" | |
| Jul 17, 2015 at 2:51 | comment | added | Doug McClean | "Picking your belly button" is somewhat close, and probably carries a similar connotation that there is something more important that you should be doing. | |
| Jul 16, 2015 at 19:38 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 16, 2015 at 20:00 | |||||
| Jul 16, 2015 at 0:32 | comment | added | Mike | I have heard the more alliterative "dicking the dog" applied to workers who were not working. | |
| Jul 16, 2015 at 0:20 | comment | added | Robusto | You must travel in more genteel circles than I do. ^_^ | |
| Jul 16, 2015 at 0:06 | comment | added | DCShannon | Agreeing with @PeterCordes that I've never heard "fuck the dog" in any context. Adding that I'm an American. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 19:41 | comment | added | hatchet - done with SOverflow | Another variant, which is the one I think I've heard the most (in the mountain west US) is "pork the pooch". I also think it's the more satisfying one to say. Must be all those p's. It's used when you or someone has an epic fail... "I really porked the pooch that time!" | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 16:52 | vote | accept | Wottensprels | ||
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:13 | comment | added | Robusto | @PeterCordes: fuck the dog is the more vulgar way of rendering the joke and the idiom. I first heard it that way because, well, when you're 12 or 13 years old you are trying out words for their shock value. :) | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:11 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | I've never heard fuck the dog in any context. Screw the pooch is widely used, though (and I didn't know it came from a dirty joke :P). | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:09 | comment | added | Robusto | Never heard scratching your elbow except to mean the literal act of relieving an itch. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:08 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | I do believe I’ve heard scratching your elbow used more or less equivalently to twiddling your thumbs. That could work. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:07 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 100 characters in body
|
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:07 | comment | added | Robusto | @JanusBahsJacquet: I agree. My use of heads was to lead the OP away from vulgarity, but I take your point that it strays into a different idiom. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:04 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Substituting the balls for the head doesn’t seem like the best option—scratching your head has quite a different meaning (puzzlement, bewilderment). You might say scratching our back sides, which I’d say is perhaps more euphemised than sanitised, but should still be usable. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 14:00 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 163 characters in body
|
| Jul 15, 2015 at 13:05 | comment | added | Robusto | Incidentally, I chose the Reddit example because it summed up the joke more succinctly than the other links I examined. (And I was too lazy to offer my own synopsis.) | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 12:42 | comment | added | Robusto | @PeterShor: Evidence is all over the Web, but I can tell you that I personally heard this particular joke many times growing up, well before there was an Internet. So when I first heard the abstracted phrase "screw the pooch" there was no doubt where it came from. | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 12:38 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Most etymologies claiming that idioms come from jokes are spurious, but this one really sounds plausible. Do you have any better evidence for it? | |
| Jul 15, 2015 at 12:17 | history | answered | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |