h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And nobody's yet mentioned "Going to the dogs" meaning something which is really going downhill. I never really understood this one but assume there's some kind of link to greyhound racing ....?

Maybe I'm wrong on this one in which case someone will no doubt give me a right bollocking (ie tell me off in no uncertain terms)

Although greyhound races are known as 'the dogs', I think the expression predates such races. Don't know what the actual origin is though.

Does anyone out there know of a book on the origins of words and phrases. I have one called 'Wordly Wise', but it doesn't cover this kind of thing.

I would have thought that if someone of something had gone to the dogs then it had been sent down to the kennels for the hounds to finish off. Possible I don't know.
As for greyhound racing (like horse racing) it's derived from hunting (why do the chase round a mechanical hare?)

Just been reading about a brick making factory that laid off it's staff, but told them that the final production had to be just as good as all the rest. The disgruntled staff altered the machinery slightly, and instead of the company name (which has most of the same letters) , there are 30,000 bricks around with BOLLOCKS stamped into them. (Thats the word, not......)

poo to you with knobs on.
british english is like fish. it is fishy. i wouldnt touch it with a long pointed stick. but i would eat it with lemon. lemon and chips. but only if it was valid.
thank you.
this is my first entry and i think you people are all wierdos.

You only think we are weird, we KNOW we are weired!!!!

Half the battle is admitting the fact...

I guess if bad can mean both bad and good, depending on the way you say it, then 'dogs' and 'bollocks' can mean just about whatever we want.

So, I'm gonna have a bollocking big lunch and a dog of an afternoon (I hope)!

Ever trickier....a "bollocking" is a serious telling off. i.e. "I got a right bollocking for handing my homework in late".

P.S. A phrase I heard this weekend which might intrigue/confuse you:
"Mad? He's Dagenham East" (Four stops past Barking )

At last, I understood something! That's your bollocking London trains, and Barking is a station (as well as 'barking mad'), and that is just one dog of an expression (hey, I even slipped an English pun in there).

I'm so happy!

The original question of calling something 'a dog' vs calling something 'the dog's bollocks' perhaps hinges on the attitude of the one party to the other.

That is, the former phrase depends on the attitude of the speaker to a dog, usually negative.

The latter phrase relies not on the relationship of the speaker to the dog, but on the relationship of the dog to its bollocks, which as we know is a very affectionate one, often publicly so. The speaker is in fact projecting himself onto the dog, and thus equating something truly excellent with the part of the dog of which the dog is most proud.

I new that!

Oh, that's even more gross than ever. I would never have guessed that saying "It's the dog's" referred to its testicles (which we now know are bollocks), and that it means good because dogs love licking their...

Someone pass me a bag, I'm ready to...

And along similar lines, the phrase 'as happy as a dog with two wotsits'.

I won't tell you about the origin of 'the bee's knees', then...

if you dont like the dogs bollocks try the muts nuts, means the same it just rolles off the tounge better

Phythian,_A Concise Dictionary of English Slang_Hodder&Stoughton '86 / Longman Dictionary of English Idioms 1979 / Collins Cobuild English Dictionary,1995 / Applebee & Rush _ Help with Idioms_ Heinemann 1992 / Dent-Young A Book of Useful Idioms , Greenwoord 1987 / Allsop & Woods Making Sense of Idioms, Cassell 1990 / Thomas, Advanced Vocabulry and Idiom, Nelson 1989

all these contain the answers to some of your questions. Any of Partridge's slang things make good fireside reading - preferably with a stiff drink. You'll never find them all in one book. It would be too heavy for us to lift. Have fun with ferreting out your puzzle solutions. If you go many stops past Barking, you'll find yourself up the creek (at Leigh) Incidentally there seem to be more synonyms for drunk than anything else in these various compilations. Have fun. |-)

However you say it, be it the dog's bollocks, the mutt's nuts or a puppy's privates, when you know the meaning and origin of the phrase you might be a bit grossed by it.
Still the good thing about English is the choice you have when you want to say something and the choice of what it means when you've just said it

I wonder if dogs have similar expressions: "It's a human" or "It's the human's".

Possibly not, unless they have a contortionist for an owner.

Anyway, I think most domestic dogs either think they're human themselves, or that we are some very strange kind of dog

woof woof

Maybe they're right. Maybe we're just strange dogs, but we're so arrogant we haven't noticed.

So we go around accusing everything else of being a dog this, a dog's that, a dog's bollocks the other.