Colloquialism: to see a man about a dog

[George Thompson]

My father was born in Brooklyn in the early 1890s.  Ca. 1950 he would use
"see a man about a dog" at least sometimes to mean that he was going to
leave my mother and me to find a bar and have a beer.

GAT

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> At 6/16/2011 04:10 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>  On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 1:12 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> > I remember it as "see a man about a horse."
>>
>
> IIRC, Larry grew up in NYC.  As did I, but I remember it as "dog".
>
> Joel
>
>
>  As do I. FWIW, only in Saint Louis, used in front of the ladies and
>> the chirren by men of my parents' age. We masculine children used
>> "take a leak," as our elders most likely did, too, when out of earshot
>> of childring and ladies.
>>
>> OTOH, I didn't learn "take a _dump_" till I was in the Army.
>>
>> Horse-drawn milk trucks, junk wagons, and other such vehicles were
>> common of the streets till some time After The War.
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
>> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org