# I have to see a man about a dog. Or, the unsearchable topic. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 26, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609 "2004-03-26T18:47:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/1 "2004-03-26T18:47:03Z")
I’m sorry if this has been covered before, but I defy anyone to do a search on this topic given the four-letter mininum length for keywords. Can anyone tell me the origin of the phrase, “I have to see a man about a dog”? Along with any number of variations of the form “I have to see a man about ‘x’”, it seems to have been quite the catchphrase in the early XXth century. There’s a Three Stooges short where the boys are running a dog hospital, and someone says they have to “see a man about a dog…diet”. P.G. Wodehouse has a character say she has to see a man about a tennis racket. Granted, it’s not completely outlandish to go see men about things, but it does seem an odd way of putting it. It’s obvious from the way the line was delivered in the Three Stooges film that seeing men about dog…diets was supposed to be funny. And the P.G. Wodehouse character would normally have said she had to go to the tennis shop to pick up her racket. So where _did_ that expression come from? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/2 "2004-03-26T18:54:28Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > I’m sorry if this has been covered before, but I defy anyone to do a search on this topic given the four-letter mininum length for keywords. > > Can anyone tell me the origin of the phrase, “I have to see a man about a dog”? Along with any number of variations of the form “I have to see a man about ‘x’”, it seems to have been quite the catchphrase in the early XXth century. There’s a Three Stooges short where the boys are running a dog hospital, and someone says they have to “see a man about a dog…diet”. P.G. Wodehouse has a character say she has to see a man about a tennis racket. > > Granted, it’s not completely outlandish to go see men about things, but it does seem an odd way of putting it. It’s obvious from the way the line was delivered in the Three Stooges film that seeing men about dog…diets was supposed to be funny. And the P.G. Wodehouse character would normally have said she had to go to the tennis shop to pick up her racket. > > So where _did_ that expression come from? Google link #1: > [@](#): > > SEE A MAN ABOUT A DOG > [Q] From Rich, Johannesburg, South Africa: “The saying I’ve got to see a man about a dog seems to be getting good use in films these days. Any idea of its origin?” > [A] This has been a useful (and usefully vague) excuse for absenting oneself from company for about 150 years, though the real reason for slipping away has not always been the same. > Like a lot of such colloquial sayings, it is very badly recorded. However, an example turned up in 1940 in a book called America’s Lost Plays, which proved that it was already in use in the US in 1866, in a work by a prolific Irish-born playwright of the period named Dion Boucicault, The Flying Scud or a Four-legged Fortune. This play, about an eccentric and superannuated old jockey, may have been, as a snooty reviewer of the period remarked, “a drama which in motive and story has nothing to commend it”, but it does include our first known appearance of the phrase: “Excuse me Mr. Quail, I can’t stop; I’ve got to see a man about a dog”. > I don’t have access to the text of the play itself, so can’t say why the speaker had to absent himself. From other references at the time there were three possibilities: 1) he needed to visit the loo (read WC, toilet, or bathroom if you prefer); 2) he was in urgent need of a restorative drink, presumed alcoholic; or 3) he had a similarly urgent need to visit his mistress. > Of these reasons—which, you may feel, encompass a significant part of what it meant to be male in nineteenth-century America—the second became the most common sense during the Prohibition period. Now that society’s conventions have shifted to the point where none of these reasons need cause much remark, the utility of the phrase is greatly diminished and it is most often used in a facetious sense, if at all. [http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-see1.htm](http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-see1.htm) My grandfather used to find the reverse, “see a dog about a man” pretty funny. Nowadays I find myself saying it too. :o ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/3 "2004-03-26T18:57:44Z")
Google link two: > [@](#): > > When someone says that they are going to see a man about a dog they really mean that they are unwilling to reveal the true nature of their business. The expression comes from the long forgotten 1866 play ‘Flying Scud’ in which one of the characters uses the words as an excuse to get away from a tricky situation. This is the only thing that seems to have survived from the play. [http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin\_board/9/messages/439.html](http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/9/messages/439.html) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/4 "2004-03-26T19:00:14Z")
Interestingly, enough, “Flying Scud” was the name of a clipper ship built in Maine in 1853: [http://www.fastq.com/~cstover/Scud.html](http://www.fastq.com/~cstover/Scud.html) ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/5 "2004-03-26T20:34:26Z")
Thanks for the responses. That jardmail website is pretty interesting, and has given me my new sig. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/6 "2004-03-27T21:29:35Z")
I don’t recall ever encountering the “see a man about a dog” phrase before, but I know the variant, “I’ve got to see a man about a horse,” which is a mascuiline way of saying “I’ve got to powder my nose,” which is an old-fashioned feminine euphemism for “I must pee now.” I’ve always thought it was a take-off on the more vulgar “I’ve got to pee like a racehorse”, but now I’m wondering if it isn’t a boastful variant on the dog expression. “You may have to see a man about a dog, but the way I’m hung, it’ll have to be about a horse.” ---
**Author:** ![Sycorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@Sycorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sycorax)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/7 "2004-03-28T23:04:13Z")
I guess I’m southern - born in Washington, D. C. (south of the Mason-Dixon line) in the '50’s, and “I have to see a man about a dog” was used frequently in my family as a euphemism meaning “I have to pee.” I have no idea of its etemology. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2004, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-to-see-a-man-about-a-dog-or-the-unsearchable-topic/236609/8 "2004-03-29T03:23:28Z")
> [@Sycorax](#): > > I guess I’m southern - born in Washington, D. C. (south of the Mason-Dixon line) in the '50’s, and “I have to see a man about a dog” was used frequently in my family as a euphemism meaning “I have to pee.” I have no idea of its etemology. Even if you get farther south of the Mason-Dixon line it still means “I have to pee.” “I’m going to see a man about a horse.” may be a more serious calling. My grandfather from around Dayton, OH used to say “I’m going to water the ducks.” 😉