Origins: The Dog's Bollocks

Subject: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Paul Reade
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 06:06 AM

Saying something is "The Dog's Bollocks", meaning it's the best you can get, the creme-de-la-creme, seems a curious description.

Any ideas where it came from?
Is it just used in the UK?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,999
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 06:28 AM

Here's a place to start. (Ranks up there with "the bee's knees".)

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 06:38 AM

Ian B

I've known the term for over 40 years from my time in the "Andrew" where it meant being well dressed to go out for the evening. The standard for men was immaculate grey flannels, white shirt, tie, Dark Blue blazer and black shoes.
It may come from DB meaning Dress Blues which was sometimes used as an acronym on party invites.
Another contraction used was to describe someone, usually female, as "Just the Dogs", being considered a great compliment.
Of course "a dog" meant just that!
Hope this helps but who really knows where slang terms originate?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 06:44 AM

In polite company you can always substitute "dog's danglies".

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,999
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 06:58 AM

LOLOL

Mr Shaw, you can be a very funny man at times. (They've let you out, huh?)

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,999
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 07:48 AM

My Great Dane is long, tall and gangly,
He keeps himself sparkly and spangly,
He prances with trollops
And shows off his bollocks
Which Steve in mixed comp'ny calls danglies.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: alex s
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 07:51 AM

Shame you can't get beefburgers at Tesco just now, but do try the meatballs.
They are the dog's bollocks!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 08:06 AM

Alex, you beat me to the punch there!

Talking of Tesco, I hear that two builders went into a branch dressed as a pantomime horse. They kept opening freezer doors and peering into the meat shelves saying, Mummy, mummy..."

They were escorted politely to the door after causing gales of laughter among the shoppers.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: RTim
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 08:20 AM

There once was a beer made by Hobgoblin called - "Dog's Bollocks"

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 08:22 AM

Just watched the panto horse on Youtube. Hilarious!
I always thought that 'dog's bollocks' was a joke on 'bee's knees', which also gave rise to 'gnat's knickers'.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Snuffy
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 08:32 AM

Simply the best: can't be licked.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Paul Reade
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 08:58 AM

Not sure about "...can't be licked ...". One thing male dogs are known for is licking them. And the reason why they lick them ...

Because they can!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Snuffy
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 10:20 AM

They can but YOU can't lick 'em!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Dr Price, cookieless
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 12:10 PM

I used to work on the subs' desk at the South Wales Echo, and "dog's dick" used to be universal slang for an exclamation mark.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST, Paul Slade
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 12:33 PM

Partridge's Concise Dictionary of slang gives the original phrase as "dog's ballocks", but that's just a variant selling of "bollocks" so it doesn't help us much.

The full entry in Partridge is: "dog's ballocks. The typographical colon-dash (:-). See dog's prick. - 2. Esp. in the phrase 'it sticks out like a dog's ballocks', said of something that the speaker considers patently obvious: low, since ca 1920."

Dog's prick, incidentally, is given the same definition Dr Price gives it above: an exclamation mark.

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang agrees with Partridge as far as the 1920s usage is concerned, adding that the meaning of "dog's bollocks" as "excellent" seems to date from the 1980s.

My guess is that the switch in meaning occurred when someone noticed that both "dog's bollocks" and "bee's knees" were descriptions of a creature's body parts - a similarity that's accentuated by the fact that both phrases are plural - and started using one term in the sense of the other. "Dog's bollocks" has an appealing crudity about it which may have helped it to catch on.

What I want to know, though, is why "up the stick" became a slang term to describe pregnancy. What stick, precisely? And why is ascending it deemed relevant in this context?

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: RTim
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 12:56 PM

From The Wychwood Brewery:

http://www.wychwood.co.uk/#/movies//hobgoblin/beers/16

Tim R

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 02:13 PM

Haven't any of you Brits ever heard of the synonymous "cat's meow/ pajamas/ nuts/ ass"? Or just "the cats"?

Over here we've never heard of the DBs, except via Partridge.

There's also "The Monkey's Paw," but you'll agree that's something entirely different.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 02:20 PM

No, Lighter, I've never heard of those. It's always dogs here!

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: alex s
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 04:11 PM

Sorry about that, Will.

I also have to say that I have been out with a few dogs in my time...but they didn't have bollocks.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Bert
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 04:15 PM

While we are at it, a dogs cock is another name for an end splice.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Jan 13 - 04:16 PM

And I've been out with a few men who talked absolute bollocks but turned out not to have any.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: alex s
Date: 20 Jan 13 - 08:43 AM

Nice one, Eliza.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: TheSnail
Date: 20 Jan 13 - 09:39 AM

This was a favourite phrase of a workmate of mine. He was also an enthusiastic juggler.

One day he cam in and announced "You ought to see these juggling balls my sister gave me for my birthday. They're the dog's bollocks!"

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 13 - 12:02 PM

These expressions all mean the same thing. You couldn't put a nun's chuff between 'em. For the uninitiated, a nun's chuff = two gnats' cocks.

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Chord strangler sans cookie
Date: 22 Jan 13 - 08:02 PM

I have always heard that is a corruption arising from product packaging. While some items were described as boxed standard, the more expensive were called boxed de luxe. This was eventually corrupted into bog standard and dog's bollox..M

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Dáithí
Date: 23 Jan 13 - 06:44 AM

I used to work in a design studio many years ago - there the term "midge's dick" was a measurement (usually in typography or artwork) of anything smaller than a couple of millimetres...

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 23 Jan 13 - 08:12 AM

You mean a "gnat's eyelash"?

(Or, in some circles, a "c**t hair." I once knew a guy who called roughly the same measurement a "fart skin.")

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: GUEST,JHW
Date: 24 Jan 13 - 06:23 AM

Dog's Bollocks sounds like rhyming slang but I've tried my rhyming dictionary with no revelation

Subject: RE: Origins: The Dog's Bollocks
From: framus
Date: 24 Jan 13 - 06:58 PM

Ref Chord strangler. This theory proposed on "QI", BBC, by Stephen Fry.

He ascribed it to the two original versions of the toy "Meccano" many moons ago.