Putting on the Dog
Danielle Arens asked
about the phrase, “putting on the dog.” It means to dress fashionably and
somewhat formally in order to impress your audience. There is no unanimous
opinion as to its origin.
One patently ridiculous
explanation (although popular with tour guides) says that when the family dog
died in pre-colonial times, its skin underwent a tanning process, and the
leather was used to make shoes or gloves. So you were literally putting on the dog when you dressed up.
Another explanation says
that it may refer to the prevalence of lap dogs carried around by fashionable
women in the period right after the American Civil War. You’d have to equate carrying with putting on in that case.
An appealing explanation
points to students at Yale in the late 1870s. In-house slang used the word dog
to refer to the uncomfortable stiff collars that men wore on formal occasions.
They were being compared to dog collars.
An aside: I mentioned
tour guides and bogus stories above. A few years ago, my wife and I toured the
White House. Our tour guide told us that 19th century presidential
wives and their friends would use a beeswax compound to hide smallpox scars and
other blemishes. The downside was that when they sat close to a blazing
fireplace while playing cards, the beeswax would begin to melt. If they caught
another woman looking at them, they would say, “mind your own beeswax.” When I confronted the guide at the end of the
tour and pointed out that this was utter nonsense, he smiled and said, “I know,
sir, but the tourists love it.”
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