No, no, no, no, no.:smack:
The answer is in German grammar.
(Stealing this from my German friend of a friend when this question arose 20 yrs ago)
Two nouns side by side form a compound noun.
Pig first, dog second, means the pig owns the dog. In English we would say “you are a pig’s dog.” (schweinhund)
Dog first, pig second (hundschwein) would mean the dog owns the pig.
great insult as it means you are so low that you are below a pig. you are the dog the pig owns.
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Generally in German composite nouns the first part specifies the second - a noun1noun2 is a type of noun2 described by noun1 (and takes the gender from noun2). So a schweinehund is a hund (and takes the male gender from hund rather than the neuter gender from schwein).
you don’t give the point of this grammar lesson. I will provide it. “described by noun1” means noun1 is the adjective describing the second noun. Pig’s dog. The first noun owns the second. Insults compete with other insults for describing how low you are. You are beneath a pig (the generally lowest insult)…you are the dog owned by the pig. (Normally dogs “own” pigs by hunting them and conquerieng them. this insult is reaaaaalllly low).
Possessive adjective equals first noun in a compound german noun. second noun is the thing we are describing.
I was wrong. It’s some kind of german insult. Perhaps like most insults not necessarily exact or literal.
It was told to me years ago by a professional dog trainer. I didn’t ask him for any details about it, because it seemed to make perfect sense to me. I have no personal experience with boar hunting!
It’s just that I can’t see anything that singles out “expendable” dogs from the other hunting dogs. Took a look at a couple of linguistics/etymology forums and no distinction is made: dogs used to hunt boar were all called “schweinehunds”. My own take on it was always that calling someone a dog is bad enough, but a dog that hunts the lowly pig is worse. But that is just my impression.