Could someone explain this phrase to me: "How do you like them apples?" (1 Viewer)

[Rex Bachmann]

Michael wrote:


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How did the phrase "Sick as a dog" come about?






Andrew Markworthy wrote:


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'Sick as a dog' may not mean quite what it first sounds. It probably originally meant 'as depressed as a dog', since some dogs were seen as naturally melancholic (think of the face of a bloodhound).





The phrase is usually used, in American English at least, to refer to being nauseated (feeling like vomiting). Sure enough, Webster's New Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary (2nd ed.) shows a dialect split in usage:

SICK


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1. suffering from disease or illness; unwell; ill: this sense is rare or literary in England






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2. having nausea; vomiting or ready to vomit: the predominant sense in England





(I'm assuming this is accurate. The Brits should know.)

I don't know enough about canine physiology, but if dogs' vomiting is anything like cats' vomiting, that's pretty traumatic-looking activity, I'd say.

Then, too, wild dogs, like wolves, regurgitate food (partially pre-digested, of course) for their young. At some point might this have been mistaken for canine illness? And perhaps the phrase was coined at a time when dog applied not just to domestic dogs, but to canines in general (wolves, foxes, wild dogs). Note that the inherited word for 'dog' used to be hound (still present in place names like Hundley vs. Manley, Wolfley, Crawley (with crow), Henley (with hen), etc.) (cf. German Hund), while the ancestor of dog referred to a particular breed of 'dog'. In modern English, they've swapped meanings.

Did early domesticated breeds of canines also regurgitate for their newly weaned young? (No Alpo and no Puppy Chow were available.)

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Charles JP wrote:

Hmmmm. I apologize to one and all. That's what's become known as a "Gotcha!".

 

[Charles J P]

Rex, Its a bit funnier if you participate in these threads a lot you will notice there is a group of AHLers that will come into any thread asking what the origin of something is and rather than try to help find it, they wait until someone posts, and then go out to snopes.com or some other site and find out why what the first person said is some kind of urban legend or old wives tale. I guess it makes them feel better, but its kind of annoying. So I preempted it with a made up story, so I knew it wouldnt exist on any of these urban legend sites. Much less funny when you have to explain the whole backgroun, but thats OK

 

[Dana Fillhart]

Not a definitive answer, but:
"How do ya like them apples?" (everything2.com)

 

[andrew markworthy]

I'm assuming this is accurate. The Brits should know.)

I hate to disagree with as august an institution as Webster's, but although it can mean to be physically nauseous, it also means to be utterly fed up or disgusted. I think that the melancholia idea is more plausible as the 'Q source' (since dogs are not renowned for vomiting) with the physical nausea meaning following.

A permutation of it is 'sick as a parrot'. People often think refers to a pandemic of the parrot population in the 1970s, but in fact the phrase was in use in the 18th century and referred to depression rather than physical illness.

 

[John Tillman]

The Apple Scruffs was a name given by the Beatles to a bunch of diehard fans who hung around the Apple Records headquarters in London and also outside the various Beatles's homes (a 'scruff' is simply someone who is rather unkempt in appearance).

Thanks Andrew, I seriously thought it was a food

. I guess a song called "Groupie" would be kind of boring.