making it across the pond?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've seen it in recent U.S .usage, but I think it's still a novelty here, confined to high-toned journalists looking for "new" expressions.

Same thing for the far more interesting "shambolic."

JL
Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: making it across the pond?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reprinted below is the conclusion of yesterday's NYT Op-Ed by Thomas
Friedman, in which the columnist is imagining the difference it would
make to GWB's policies if his vice president, instead of being Dick
Cheney, were someone who intended to run for president him- or
herself--and, to my ear, were also someone who'd spent a lot of time
in Britain:

==================
But if Mr. Bush had a vice president with an eye on 2008, I have to
believe he or she would be saying to the president right now: ''Hey
boss. What are you doing? Where are you going? How am I going to get
elected running on this dog's breakfast of antiscience,
head-in-the-sand policies?'' ==================

This led me to wonder whether "dog's breakfast" has become standard
U.S. usage. I don't remember coming across it before outside of
British, or maybe Australian or Canadian, writing, but I'm pretty
sure Friedman is no Brit, and both he and his editors presumably
believed that his readers would understand the allusion--or that they
would google it and find e.g.

The Phrase Finder (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/114550.html)
Dog's breakfast

Meaning
A mess or muddle.

Origin
Derived from the unpleasant habit of dogs, rising early before the
local townsfolk, or eating the mess of food dropped or vomited onto
the pavement the previous night.

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