I’m well aware of the expression and its variation, “I don’t have a dog in this hunt”. I’m pretty sure it’s an English term originally.
What’s interesting is that Australian English employs a bit of Cockney Rhyming Slang which can often confuse people, too. The ones I hear the most often are “Dog & Bone” (Telephone) and “Trouble & Strife” (Wife), but there’s a few others that pop up from time to time that are fairly easy to work out from context (or an understanding of how CRS works), but they still seem to baffle a lot of younger people.
I’ve also been known to use “Tally Ho!” too, but I’ve also been accused of being born in the wrong century several times so that’s probably to be expected.
I get strange looks when asked “How ya doin’?” and I reply either “Peachy” or “Just ducky”.
I also tend to use a lot of jive slang from the 40’s. Cab Calloway’s autobiography had a copy of his “Hepster’s Dictionary” in the back and I took it to heart. I still can’t take any one named Jeff seriously. That used to be a term for an unhip person.
I’ve never heard “I don’t have a dog in this hunt” but I’ve heard, “That dog won’t hunt” as in, “Your idea is ridiculous” or “That will never work” or “Ain’t no freakin’ way.”
My first girlfriend, back in high school circa 1992, used to sit there quietly on our dates. It was like trying to have a conversation with the wind. One day, I said, “Every time we go out and you sit there, not giving a rat’s ass.” She responded, “That doesn’t even make any sense!” I explained that “to give a rat’s ass” means “to care,” or “to give a shit,” as it were.
I had never heard the phrase until John Waters came to the university where I teach and used it a few times in his Q&A session. My friend and I, both around 50 y.o., rushed home afterwards to google it and were–well, not surprised that it was racy, because Waters had used it in the kind of context you’d expect–but surprised that neither of us had heard of it before, since we’re readers and voracious Internet surfers.
Speaking of ducks, I was in a business meeting once and an older gentleman repeated over and over that he really wanted to accomplish a lot at the meeting because getting everyone together was “like making duck soup”. Actually, I have no idea if that’s what he said. He may have said that getting us together was “not like making duck soup”. It could have gone either way and made as much sense to me.
His point was that it was hard to get us together but as far as I remember he may have said getting us together is “like making duck soup, because duck soup is incredibly hard to make” or getting us together is “not like making duck soup, because duck soup is a great example of something easy to do”. I have no idea.
Has anyone ever heard the expression? Is duck soup easy to make or hard to make?
“Duck soup” was once a common enough expression that it became the title of a Laurel and Hardy short film and a much more famous Marx Brothers feature. It means “piece of cake.”
ETA: I admit I had to look up the meaning. But I knew it was once a common expression!
Just yesterday, Michel Martin of NPR’s “Tell Me More,” made great use of “That dog won’t hunt,” in her weekly commentary about Joe Wilson’s outburst during the President’s speech.
I had to bring it up because I just love what she said.
On another note, I like to use, “For the love of Pete,” and often get weird looks about it. I think it’s funny and I plan to keep using it when appropriate.
Born and raised in the midwest, I had never heard of any dogs unwilling to hunt nor any dogs in fights until my new supervisor was a transfer from S. Carolina. He had all kinds of these quaint phrases that only sound good with a suth’n drawl.
