WHY DO WE SAY—?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 190, 14 August 1933, Page 6

WHY DO WE SAY—?

"TO GO TO THE DOGS."

To speak of someone having gone to ruin, one of the expressions we most frequently employ is, of course, "to go to the dogs." Our humorists would have lacked many a joke about people who had "gone to the dogs" at the greyhound track when this sport became popular, if we had not had this metaphorical phrase in our language. It is only too rarely, however, that the expression can be used humorously and without serious significance. Of all animals, the dog seems to have come in for little recognition of merit at the hands of those people who originate proverbial sayings. "As faithful as a dog," of course, recognises one of the virtues of this honourable creature, but apart from this one instance, most of the phrases which we use with reference to it are detrimental. The idiom in question, "to go to the dogs," certainly has nothing about its origin which is likely to raise the opinion of anyone concerning those much-abused animals. For the indications are that the expressions* found birth in an old custom of throwing to th'o dogs all the scraps of meat and unwanted food that remained at the end of a meal. We are generally told that this was particularly a custom among the countries of the East in 'olden times, but tho average person even to-day is not too particular with regard to the remnants he gives to his clog. In Shakespeare, Macbeth says in the fifth act, "Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it." Here is a case of the use of the expression in a way in which it does not often occur to-day, when it is usually a matter of a person going to the dogs. This theory respecting tho origin (of the phrase has been varied somewhat at the hands of old etymologists, who asserted that it was derived, not from the custom of throwing the leavings from a meal to tho dogs, but from a practice of using the flesh of worn out and worthloss horses for meat for dogs. This is_ the suggestion that is put forth in an interesting Slang Dictionary of 1805. Another proposition has been made that our English expression has come direct from a Dutch proverb, "Too goe, toe <le dogs," meaning, "Money gone, credit gone," but neither of these explanations seem as reasonable as the first.