Dog in the manger

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:02 PM -0400 9/20/00, sagehen wrote:
>Karl Krahnke wrote:
>>One of my linguist colleagues, of Irish origin, offers the form "dog in a
>>manger" in the sense of "an element in the whole that screws things up."
>
>
>"Nigger in the woodpile" always meant some hidden nefarious thing, not
>necessarily identified or even known.

Wouldn't "skeleton in the closet" be used for this more general
sense?  Nigger in the woodpile to me does always evoke a secret
specifically in the bloodline, not just any "hidden nefarious thing"
about one's past.

>  "Dog in the manger" on the other
>hand had the very specific meaning  of hogging something that one didn't
>really want or have use for, but didn't want anyone else to have.   I never
>heard it used in the sense given above.

I'm not sure HOW I'd have interpreted this one, although I've heard
it used.  Here's what a couple of sources have--essentially as
sagehen describes:
========
 From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable:

        A mean-spirited individual who will not use what is wanted by
another, nor yet let the other have it to use; one who prevents
another enjoying something without any benefit to himself. The
allusion is to the fable of the dog that fixed his place in a manger
and would not allow the ox to come near the hay but would not eat it
himself.

 From The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

        A person who spitefully refuses to let someone else benefit
from something for which he or she has no personal use: "We asked our
neighbor for the fence posts he had left over, but, like a dog in the
manger, he threw them out rather than give them to us." The phrase
comes from one of Aesop's fables, about a dog lying in a manger full
of hay. When an ox tries to eat some hay, the dog bites him, despite
the fact that the hay is of no use to the dog.
===========
larry