Yellow Dog Democrat (1882)

[Jonathan Lighter]

As Dr. Holmes explained it in _Elsie Varner_ (1860, ch.3,  "A ‘yallah dog’ is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel colour, of no particular breed except his own."

  This was a common phrase before the introduction of "mutt."   I believe it was Peter Tamony who tried to identify the "yellow dog" as specifically the lurcher (a poacher's dog that was a cross between a greyhound and any of various other breeds, usu. a sheepdog, collie, or mastiff), but apparently without success.

  JL

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Bapopik at AOL.COM
Subject: Yellow Dog Democrat (1882)
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Grant Barrett's HATCHET JOBS AND HARDBALL: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF
AMERICAN POLITICAL SLANG (2004) has 1883 for "yellow dog."
...
There were special elections yesterday in New York City, including one for
the Assembly seat of the Democrat who defeated me for Manhattan Borough
President. In that District, the Republican candidate got 9% of the vote yesterday.
It was said today that even if the Democrats had run a yellow dog...
...
...
...
13 July 1882, Washington Post, pg. 2:
_California Democrats in Convention._
>From the San Francisco Examiner.

The whole course and current of the convention's thoughts and acts was an
earnest, determined opposition to monopoly of all kinds, which was crystalized
into an adamantine wall to check the encroachments of the great transportation
monopolies of the State. It was spitefully said by a railroad lobbyist at
San Jose that if a yellow dog mounted the platform and bayed at the railroad
the convention would at once nominate the dog for any office that he choose to
ask. Personal pique and prejudice blinded that lobbyist to the real fact of
the case, yet his words may be accepted as a tribute to the earnest
anti-monopoly feeling displayed.

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