dog-eat-dog (1872)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 5 May 2005 21:01:50 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>and when was the first "doggy-dog (world)" cite?

The breakout year for "doggy-dog world" was clearly 1983 -- it's mentioned
as a malapropism in at least four articles from that year (Wash. Post
1/23/83, College English 3/83, Wash. Post 9/6/83, CSM 12/5/83).  The only
earlier cite that I see is from the Chicago Herald, 10/14/79, where it
appears as a pun.

Interestingly, there's also an example of the eggcorn working in the other
direction:

-----
"Wrestling's Their Way to the Top" by Lloyd Grove
Washington Post, Jan. 8, 1982 (Sporting Life), p. 31
In a stuffy high-school gym in Silver Spring the other night, Beghtol and
a dozen other kids were writhing in pairs on a sweat-slick mat. This was
the high point of the wrestling practice, a round-robin of bouts known as
"doggy-dog," occasionally misheard as "dog eat dog." "It's pretty much the
same thing," shrugs Larry Hill, the coach.
-----


--Ben Zimmer