One more thing: "I got to see a man about a mule/dog", δεν σημαίνει οτι πρέπει να πάω προς φυσικές ανάγκες μου, τουλάχιστον όχι στα Αγγλικά που μιλάμε εδώ (Αγγλία)
Σημαίνει μάλλον, «Έχω μια δουλειά, και να μην σε νοιάζει τί είναι», δηλαδή «Πάω κάπου, και μην είσαι περίεργος». Συγνώμη αν κάποιος το έχει ήδη αναφέρει, διάβασα το thread λίγο βιαστικά.
Για δες και εδώ[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.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-see1.htmI always have been interested in phrases and their origin. But this one has stumped me. The phrase is "
I am gonna see a man about a dog" which somehow means i am going to the bathroom. I cant find any explanation how that came about. Can anyone help?
I cant find the exact origin but maybe someone else can.
This euphemistic term dates from the Prohibition days of the 1920s, when buying liquor was illegal, and, after repeal, was transferred to other circumstances.
According to Eric Partridge, "A Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British," this phrase has had three meanings during its history: "I must visit a woman--sexually: late C19-20. Hence, I'm going out for a drink: late C19-20. In C20, often in answer to an inconvenient question about one's destination:
I must go to the water-closet, usu. to 'the gents', merely to urinate."
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