Retired Techie
Getting older, not necessarily wiser!
Sick As a Dog
Published on August 24, 2022 at 5:47 pm by LEWI have been sick as a dog, and not posting for quite a few days now (sinus infection). And had a busted computer to boot.Have you ever wondered about the phrase “sick as a dog”? I did. Turns out it can be traced back to the early 1700’s. If you think about it, dogs have been getting a bad rap in language for a long time. Not only was I “sick as a dog”, but I was also “dog tired”.
Of course I have been “in the dog house” many a time. And I can always be the “underdog”. Then there is always the “dog day afternoon”, and you can be “thrown to the dogs”. We can even drag houses in to this discussion with the ever popular cooperate meetings or simply “a dog and pony show”, I have been to my share.
Then there is the always popular “double dog dare”. And why do books get d”dog eared”? Or how about “dogs of war” or “doggy bag”?
Interestingly, I was not able to discover any rhyme or reason to so many dog idioms. Maybe this could be a thesis for some grad student in a degree field with limited employment opportunities.
I would guess dogs are an easy target, since they are among the first domesticated animals, and in many cases share a close relationship with their human counterparts. So they were there and they were both convenient and familiar subjects for expressive idioms. That is my take on all the dog idioms. I would be interested in any other thoughts?
The computer issue was a MS Windows Failure on my dual boot system. The Linux side of the system still works flawlessly. MS Windows decided to screw up the networking royally (hmm, will avoid another idiom digression here).
The on line trouble shooting was basically useless, as they all assume you are doing something stupid and MS Windows never breaks itself. Long story short, it was easier and quicker to reinstall than mess around with on line trouble shooting. This was relatively quick, about two hours. I took a lesson form Linux and do not keep anything of value on a Windows system partition. And I have a bash (Linux) script that pulls down the latest versions of the software I use. I may write up something later about getting Steam and Origins to re sync instead of re download.
Anyway, I am feeling much better, and plan to get back to a more regular posting schedule. So stay tuned!