| Subject: Re: 100% Proof and Evidence about people ....... |
| From: "Charles D. Bohne" <me@PasoSchweiz.de> |
| Date: 25/01/2007, 01:15 |
| Newsgroups: alt.alien.research,alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo,alt.fan.art-bell,sci.skeptic,alt.aliens.they-are-here |
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:03:57 +1300, Sir Gilligan Horry
<GM@ga7rm5er.com> wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:19:45 +0100, "Charles D. Bohne"
<me@PasoSchweiz.de> wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:51:28 +1300, Sir Gilligan Horry
<GM@ga7rm5er.com> wrote:
BBL, have to see a man about a dog.
What man? Whose dog? What for?
Nar, it's just an old Australian outback saying.
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”.
cont.: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-see1.htm
more: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/go+to+see+a+man+about+a+dog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_a_man_about_a_horse