In Britain, a hogg (sic) is a sheep before its first shearing and a hogget is a yearling sheep. A hogget in New Zealand, which has far more sheep than people, is a lamb between weaning and its first shearing.
Hognut is another name for earthnut, which isn’t a nut, but a plant related to parsley with an edible roundish almond-flavored tuber (almonds aren’t nuts either, but members of the rose family).
Hogweed is also a member of the parsley family. A weed with big white flowers, it was used as forage for pigs.
Pig’s Eye, Pigs Fly
The first record that pigs have small eyes for their size, the opposite of cats and human babies, was in the 1500s. Strange that it took so long to write it down, though countless documents disintegrated through time and countless others were destroyed by conquering cultures. Symbolically, the porcine eye was too small to hold much imagination or human warmth, as in poet Richard Flecknoe’s “Enigmaticall (sic) Characters” (1658): “She have (sic) the spirit in her of twenty school-mistresses, looking with her Pigs-eyes so narrowly to her charge.”
By the 1800s Americans had changed the meaning of in a pig’s eye to incredulity. (A modern equivalent is “No way!”)
An alternative already existed; in 1732 Thomas Fuller wrote in Gnomologia, “That is as likely as to see a Hog fly.” (In olden days English nouns were often capitalized, as they still are in German.) Another rejoinder to a fantastical statement was “And pigs might fly” or “When pigs fly.”
Why air-borne pigs, of all animals? Pigs and hogs are associated with terra firma, wallowing in mud, rooting in the earth, plus they’re stocky. Easier to picture a cat soaring upward, with its lighter frame, greater poise, and talent for balletic leaps and survived falls from high places. Perhaps simply because flying pigs are harder, and funnier, to picture.
Hog II. . .
In 2006 Harley-Davidson Inc. changed its NYSE listing from HDI to HOG. The company had unsuccessfully sued H.O.G., a Harley Owners Group club, and attempted to copyright “hog,” but an appellate panel ruled in 1999 that the word had become a generic term for large motorcycles. It started in the 1920s when a group of farm boys calling themselves the Hog Boys often won races on their Harley-Davidsons. Their mascot was, depending on the source, a hog or a small pig, and after each win the animal would be put on the motorcycle and taken for a victory lap.
Of unknown origin, a hogshead can be a large cask or a liquid measure for wine or beer, differing in its US, imperial (British), and metric proportions.
Hogback or hog’s back is a long, steep hill or mountain range.
To hog-tie is a North American term for securing an animal or human by fastening all four feet or the hands and feet together. It also means to significantly impede.
Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve in Scotland, has aught to do with hogs or pigs. It may derive from Norman French meaning the last day of the year or a new year’s gift.
To Eat Like a Pig
To eat like a pig is self-explanatory, but did you know German has two verbs for “to eat”: one for humans, one for animals. Thus in German one needn’t specifically reference a pig or hog to indicate that a human eats greedily and sloppily; one simply uses the alternate verb form.
Likewise Spanish has separate words for the legs of humans versus animals, so a person’s thick legs may be described as patas instead of piernas. (In Japan, thick legs are “radish legs.” Go figure.)
As for someone having “the manners of a pig,” that doesn’t make much sense, for manners, per the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, are “polite or well-bred social behavior,” and pigs—hogs too—have no awareness of being polite or well-bred, whether eating or wallowing in mud.
Pig Expressions
The word pig likely derives from Olde English picbred, meaning an acorn but literally pig bread (i.e., food for pigs). A pig is also an oblong piece of iron or lead from a smelting furnace or a close-fitting device in an oil or gas pipeline that’s sent through it to clean or test the inside or provide a barrier.
A pig in a poke—poke being a bag—is something bought sight unseen or untested.
The British phrase a pig of a (blank) has largely been superseded by the American-influenced a bitch of a (blank), as in “I’ve had a pig of a day, don’t ask.”
On the pig’s back is Irish slang for living easily and/or luxuriously. As Irish as Paddy’s pig is quintessential Irishness.
To make a pig of oneself is self-explanatory. More modern is to pig out, as with most phrases ending in “out” (e.g., drop out, tune out, opt out).
Pig-headed, like bull-headed, is stubborn but also means less yielding to humans (no one says horse-headed . . .).
Pig-ignorant is extremely dumb, ignorant or crude. Pig iron is crude iron, initially from a smelting furnace in the form of oblong blocks.
An early mention of pig Latin, a non-Latin sort of juvenile code language, occurred in Putnam’s magazine in 1869, but it was popularized via Hollywood golden-era movies. The ig-pay atin-Lay “code” is easily cracked.
A pignut, from the parsley family, is an earthnut and is also called a hognut (see the previous Hog section).
Pigskin is a US name for a football. A pigpen or pigsty may be certain children’s bedrooms.
Pigtails are plaited locks of hair worn singly on the back or on each side of a girl’s head. A pigtail is also a twist of tobacco or a short length of braided wire joining a stationary part of an electrical device to a moving part.
Pigweed is a North American plant used for fodder but a weed in most other countries.
Pigsticking was the so-called sport of hunting wild boar on horseback, using a spear.
A guinea pig is a tailless South American cavy or rodent, now fully domesticated and used as a pet or lab animal. A person may be a guinea pig, wittingly or not.
A bandicoot is a mostly insectivorous marsupial found in Australia and New Guinea whose name originated in the 1700s from a Telugu word meaning pig-rat.
Pork. . .
Pork is from Latin porcus, meaning pig, so Porky Pig’s name is like saying Piggy Pig. (Which is fun to say.)
To pork out is to pig out. A porker is a young pig fattened for the kill or a fat person. A porkling is a small or young pig, not yet doomed to be a porker.
Pork pie is a British raised pie with minced cooked pork in it, eaten cold. A pork-pie hat has a flat crown and a brim that’s turned up all around.
Porky is US slang for a porcupine, while pork barrel is an American term coined in the early 20th century from a barrel that held a reserve of meat—it means the corrupt practice of using government funds for projects that win votes.
FYI, the “decorative” apple in a roast pig’s mouth is inserted afterward, else the poor dead porker would be drooling applesauce.
Pig Ears
A pig’s ear is reportedly the sole part of that animal which cannot be eaten or somehow used. Ergo, in the Middle Ages when a craftsman’s apprentice tried but failed to produce something useful or made a muddle of an assignment, he was said to have made a pig’s ear.
In a pig’s ear is a now obsolete alternative for in a pig’s eye, which also expresses disbelief.
Pig’s ear is Cockney rhyming slang for beer.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear is common sense about not being able to make a quality item out of inferior material. This was an established expression by the 16th century. In 1579 The Ephemerides of Phialo noted, “Seeking too (sic) make a silke purse of a Sowes eare, that when it shoulde close, will not come togeather.” Some say it’s a sow’s ear instead of a male pig’s because purse is a feminine item; however, purse back then didn’t have the feminine connotation it does today.
Piggy Bank, Piggyback
Why a piggy bank and not a doggy bank or a kitty bank? (In fact one does “feed the kitty.”) Because “piggy” evolved from pygg, the name of a clay once widely used in Britain to make kitchen earthenware items. People often used to store money in kitchen jars
and pots made of pygg, ergo pygg jars, later pig jars, later pig banks. Eventually, for humor’s sake, pig banks were molded in the shape of pigs.
After adults became comfortable with putting their money in real banks, the former pygg jars were used for spare change and often called penny banks. When they became popular for teaching children thrift and saving, they were renamed piggy banks.
In parts of Britain, pigs or china pigs are clay bottles used as bed warmers, sometimes in the shape of pigs.
Regarding “piggyback,” precious few pigs would allow themselves to be carried that way. Again, the term originally had aught to do with animals. In the 1500s “pick pack” or “pick back” was a way of carrying something on one’s back that by the 1700s had changed to “pick a pack,” which was too close to “piggyback” to resist. Though now usually associated with a child carried on an adult’s back, piggyback also denotes one thing stacked atop another, like trucks on flatbed railway cars.
Piggy. . .
“This little piggy went to market” begins the famous 18th-century nursery rhyme in which very young toes represent five little piggies, one of whom eats roast beef and one of whom, by inclination or lack, has none.
The adjective piggy can refer to a person’s appetite or facial features. Crooner Dick Haymes, once as popular as Frank Sinatra, was noted for his porcine nose; he was nonetheless good-looking (one wife was “love goddess” Rita Hayworth).
Piggy in the Middle is a British game wherein two players try to throw a ball to each other without the person in between catching it. The expression also indicates somebody put in an awkward situation between two other people.
On little and big screens, the Muppets often spotlighted Miss Piggy, whose point, besides bedeviling Kermit the Frog, seemed to be female assertiveness and pride in, well, porkiness.
Male Chauvinist Pig
This 1970s term for the opposite of a feminist borrowed “pig” from the ’60s American slang reference to policemen as porky, fat, and animalistic. Chauvinism is one of many French words extracted from the surnames of real people, including silhouette, mesmerism, and guillotine. Nicolas Chauvin was a French general under Napoleon noted for his excessive patriotism—that is, at the expense of other countries. Often abbreviated MCP, the term for someone with no respect for women as individuals may or may not have been coined by a female.
Piggle. . .
The verb “to piggle” is found in relatively few dictionaries. It has or had various meanings, most of dubious origin. The obvious one is to scarf down food . . . like a pig. It’s also to root for potatoes by hand. In England’s East Midlands dialect it meant to pick at a scab. The noun piggle was a multipronged hook for rooting potatoes or mixing materials like clay and mortar together (mixing with a hook?). Today a piggle is a cross between a pit bull and a beagle—talk about an identity crisis.
In 1947 author Betty MacDonald launched the beloved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s series. She’d already published The Egg and I, which became a hit movie and spawned the Ma and Pa Kettle film series. Post-All in the Family, Jean Stapleton played Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who cleverly and whimsically teaches children with bad habits to reform.
Higgledy-piggledy is too seldom heard—or read—these days. An adverb and adjective, it means in disorder—like helter-skelter, minus its negative connotation. Originating in the late 1500s, the childlike rhyming phrase may have referred to the erratic herding together of pigs.
Rabbit Mascots
One of the longest-lasting animal mascots is B’rer Rabbit (originally Brother Rabbit), jauntily featured on containers of Brer Rabbit Molasses. The likeable trickster, not unlike Bugs Bunny, had his own comic strip, “Uncle Remus and His Tales of B’rer Rabbit” from 1945 to 1972.
Another long-eared icon was the Bosco Rabbit. The chocolate syrup, which kids mixed into milk, was extremely popular in the 1950s and ’60s. It came in a bunny-shaped plastic container; today the product is only regional. The Quik Bunny, with great floppy ears, was used to sell Nestle’s Quik, a powder—also available in strawberry—mixed into milk.
From its second issue on, Playboy magazine has featured a rabbit on its cover, though it wasn’t the original choice. Hugh Hefner was going to name his magazine Stag Party, until Stag magazine threatened to sue.
One of the most entertaining mascots is the Trix Rabbit, introduced in 1959. Described as a lovable loser, he knows what he wants—a bowl of Trix cereal—but never gets it because “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.” Psychoanalysts have attributed the character’s great success to children identifying with TR, since they too often don’t get what they want.
The Energizer Bunny who goes on and on and on has sold countless batteries in a lengthy parade of award-winning commercials, eventually costarring in ads with Dracula, King Kong, Wile E. Coyote, and Darth Vader.
Welsh Rabbit
In 1725, according to the Standard Oxford English Dictionary, the dish comprising melted cheese and butter mixed with seasoning and poured over buttered toast was called Welsh rabbit. By 1785 it was Welsh rarebit. Why? Etymologizing, whereby a word that makes no sense—what rabbit?—is changed to one that does or makes more sense (even if none of those ingredients is rare).
It’s not known why it was originally called Welsh rabbit. But then, mock-turtle soup has no turtle in it (it’s made from calf’s head, no comment) and Bombay duck is a fish. Aren’t people funny, though?
Rabbits and Hares
In North America, rabbit means a rabbit or a hare. The latter, usually larger, has very long hind legs and is renowned for speed. In Britain, to hare is to run very fast.
To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds means to keep on good terms with both sides in a conflict; thus a secondary meaning is to be insincere or opportunistic.
To chase every hare is to be easily sidetracked.
Mad as a March hare vies with mad as a hatter in Alice in Wonderland in terms of erratic behavior. March is the rutting season during which hares supposedly go mad, leaping, boxing, and chasing over the countryside. To fly like a March hare combines the animal’s swiftness and the intensity of that particular month.
First catch your hare is a mostly British expression saying to do things in an orderly and prepared manner. It’s from the recipe on how to cook a hare from the celebrated Mrs. Beeton’s Cook Book, published in 1861.
A harelip, also known as a cleft lip, is named after the perceived resemblance to a hare’s mouth.
Bunny, a child’s name for a rabbit, comes from 17th-century English dialect bun, a rabbit or squirrel. Bunny, rabbit, and hare all share an unfortunate reputation for fear and stupidity, reflected in such phrases as a dumb bunny, like a scared rabbit, and hare-brained (the latter also means rash—ill judgment born of speed). In Australia a bunny is also a human victim or a dupe. One factor in assuming rabbits are nervous or scared is their frequent but not constant nose twitching, which aids in their breathing and personal climate control.
In Britain, to “rabbit” is to chat informally, while “Rabbit, rabbit!” is a sexist phrase emulating talking women.
A “rabbit punch” is a swift chop applied to the back of someone’s neck with the edge of the hand.
Rabbitfish have blunt noses and rabbit-like teeth or jaws. The Atlantic variety has the intriguing name Chimaera monstrosa.
To pull a rabbit out of a hat is a signature magic trick dating back to 1814 when Louis Comte—Count in English—was reportedly the first magician to do so. The expression signifies to effect or pull off a totally unexpected yet desirable solution.
Did you know “the rabbit test” required virgin female rabbits? Fortunately, animals are no longer used in pregnancy tests.
Pot Shot
A cooking pot whose primary ingredients were vegetable was typically always on the fire during the Middle Ages. (If the family could afford to spare a meal for a visitor, she or he was said to be given pot luck.) As for pot shot, it meant the hunter would shoot whatever animal cro
ssed his path rather than track a specific game. Whatever he shot went into the family cooking pot.
The modern word meat is from Olde English mete, food or food item, of Germanic origin. Though once central to the language and to eating (meat used to mean the principal meal), today meat has several negative connotations; some examples: meathead or meatball—both dumbbells—or meat market—a place for sexual pickups—meat—a person as sexual object—or easy meat—somebody easily won over or outsmarted.
Porcupine and Hedgehog
The prickly porcupine got its name from the pig—animals were often named after others they resembled or barely resembled or not at all (a starfish?). “Porcupine” equals Latin porcus spina—thorn pig. Those familiar with porcupines (hopefully not with their quills) nickname them porkies. Further removed is the spiny porcupine fish that inflates itself when threatened.
Hedgehog pudding isn’t what it sounds like (neither is carrot cake). The name of this nocturnal, insectivorous mammal that hardly resembles a hog and bears spines is used in the names of fruits and plants with spines, for instance, the hedgehog cactus. Hedgehog pudding is a variation on England’s tipsy cake, soaked in alcohol and engulfed in custard or syllabub—sweetened milk or cream, slightly curdled with wine. Unlike the cake, the pudding is decorated with slivered almonds sticking out like spines.
A famous fairy tale is “Hans, My Hedgehog,” about a half-human, half-hedgehog boy who evolves into a full human. A once nationally recognized mascot was Poppy the porcupine, who for a while replaced Sugar Pops Pete (who had a western image, less popular in the 1960s). Today the cereal is called Corn Pops—it sounds healthier, anyway.
Kidnapping
By any name, kidnapping—usually with ransom money as its goal—has existed for millennia (because of their wealth, royalty and nobility were the usual targets). One American explanation for the word is that since 1893 the US Navy’s mascot has been a goat . . . a kid named El Cid (after the medieval Spanish hero) was once stolen by cadets as a prank.
Holy Cow! Page 11