by Kevin Burton
I have suspended my devotion to cats long enough this week to share some dictionary words from Merriam-Webster that pertain to dogs.
Before we continue with their list, here is one the dictionary curiously left out – dog days.
Dog days is “the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere” or “a period of stagnation or inactivity”
So, with no further stagnation, back to the dog list:
Yellow/Blue dog
In the 19th century, the noun yellow dog developed a derogatory sense, meaning a low, despicable person. This usage probably came about from the traditional association of the color yellow with cowardice.
Just before the turn of the century, the adjective yellow-dog started to be used by writers who were derogatorily describing organizations that expressed opposition to trade unions.
The popularized term “Yellow-dog contract” refers to an agreement in which the employee agrees not to join a labor union during the time he or she is employed.
You may also encounter a use of yellow-dog that is not connected to the anti-union sense. A “yellow-dog Democrat” is one who strictly votes the party line. It is said that such a person would rather vote for a yellow dog than for a Republican.
In the 1990s, another hued Democratic dog was introduced into U.S. politics: the Blue Dog. The Blue Dog is a member of a group of primarily southern Democrats who identify themselves as more moderate and conservative than mainstream members of the party. Their name may have been inspired by the blue dog depicted in paintings by Louisiana artist George Rodrigue, which hung in the offices of Louisiana congressmen who helped form the Blue Dog coalition.
Snack
You might hear of a dog “snapping” or “taking a snap at (something),” meaning it makes a sudden biting motion towards an object. That use of snap goes back to the 1500s. Earlier, about 1400, people would say a dog “snaked” or “took a snake”—those are the Middle English forms of the familiar modern verb and noun snack, which are believed to be derived from the Middle Dutch verb snacken, also meaning “to bite.”
Apparently, when an animal “snacked,” it sometimes took a portion of something, leading to senses of both the verb and noun denoting a share, portion, or part, which were established in English by the early 1700s. At that time, the noun snack was also used for a small drink of liquor.
The now-common food sense of snack, referring to a light meal or food eaten between meals, soon followed but early use often referred to what is known today as “lunch.”
The corresponding verb sense, referring to the consumption of a small amount of food eaten between meals, was served up in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that people were snacking on snacks.
Dogwood
The dogwood is known to beautify a landscape with its flowers in the spring and berries in the fall, and, for many, its phases signal the arrival of spring and the coming of winter. A popular theory as to the origin of its name is planted in Middle English dag, a word that generally refers to a pointed object and that is derived from French dague (“dagger”).
That etymology is rooted in the tree’s characteristic hardwood and strong slender stems which, through the ages, have been used in making strong piercing tools, such as skewers, arrows, and spindles. It has been suggested that dog is a corruption of dag, but etymological evidence of that change is soft. On another note, we’re confident that dagwood is the name for a many-layered sandwich made popular by the character Dagwood Bumstead in the comic strip Blondie.
Considering that the tree had the previous names of dog tree, dogberry, hound’s-tree, and hound’s-berry, it’s more than probable that the source of dogwood is dog; it fits the nomenclature. These names may have come about from use of the tree’s bark as a wash for a mangy dog—or because the tree’s branches “bark” when rubbed together in the wind.
Canine
The adoption of canine into English is a bit uncanny. The word is a derivative of the Latin adjective caninus, based on canis, meaning “dog.” However, it was first applied in Middle English (circa 1400) as a noun and adjective in reference to one of the four pointed teeth situated on each jaw in mammals (“the canine teeth”)—the upper canines in the human jaw are called eyeteeth, the lower are stomach teeth. The “dog” senses are actually recorded centuries later: in the early 17th century, the adjective begins to be barked (“canine devotion”) and then the noun (“a well-behaved canine”)—but not until mid-19th century.
Hangdog
In the past, dogs that misbehaved in a violent or condemnable manner—such as biting a human or stealing a person’s food—were often terminated by hanging. William Shakespeare brings this unfortunate social practice to light in his comedy Two Gentleman of Verona through Launce, a comical servant and owner of the canine Crab. In the play, Launce explains how, when Crab is caught relieving himself under a banquet table, “all the chamber smelt him. ‘Out with the dog!’ says one; ‘What cur is that?’ says another; ‘Whip him out’ says the third; ‘Hang him up’ says the Duke.
Post-Shakespeare, hangdog came to be used as both an adjective describing either the expression of dejection, guilt, or shame that resembled the look on the condemned dog’s face or that of the degraded executioner’s; hangdog is also a noun referring to a person so degraded that he could hang a dog.
Bone to pick
The phrase “a bone to pick” goes back to at least the 16th century. Originally, “to have a bone to pick” (or “to have a bone to gnaw”) meant “to have something to keep one occupied,” and evolved to mean “to have a problem or difficulty to solve.” Thus, if someone has a bone to pick, they have something that would occupy their attention in the same way that a dog will stay occupied when it has a bone to pick at or gnaw on.
It is the sense relating to having a problem or difficulty to solve that the phrase “to have a bone to pick with someone” employs. If you have a bone to pick with someone, you have a problem (a disagreement or complaint) that the two of you need to work out, something that, figuratively speaking, you would need to pick at as a dog picks at a bone.
The phrase “to make no bones about it” meaning “to be straightforward, unhesitating, or sure about something,” goes back to the Middle Ages and either originated in the kitchen or the gambling house.
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