Idiom: living high on the hog; eating too high up on the hog (antedating 1919 November 28)

[Wilson Gray]

The poor are a caution, aren't they? It's a good thing that there were
no refrigerators for them to hoard, back in those days! Otherwise,
there would have been no need to wait another dekkid for the crash!

--
-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

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Idiom: living high on the hog; eating too high up on the hog
> Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â (antedating 1919 November 28)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At a dinner party last night I was asked about the expression "living
> high on the hog." The OED has this phrase listed under the entry for
> hog with a first citation dated 1940:
>
> hog, n.1,
> Phrases 8. orig. and chiefly U.S. to live (also eat) high off (also
> on) the hog : to live in an extravagant or luxurious style. Hence: to
> live (also eat) low off (also on) the hog (and variants).
>
>
> The Phrase Finder website has a page on this topic with valuable
> information. The earliest citation is a New York Times article dated
> March 4, 1920. The phrase in the newspaper differs slightly from the
> one given in the OED:
>
> Southern laborers who are "eating too high up on the hog" (pork chops
> and ham) and American housewives who "eat too far back on the beef"
> (porterhouse and round steak) are to blame for the continued high cost
> of living, the American Institute of Meat Packers announced today.
>
> http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/high-on-the-hog.html
>
>
> Here is an excerpt from citation in 1919. The article is labeled "From
> the Chicago News," so an earlier cite probably exists. The article
> consists of a "joke" in "dialect" with a framing commentary:
>
> Cite: November 28, 1919, Kansas City Star, One Cause for the H. C. L.:
> We Eat "Too Far up on the Hog," District Attorney in Chicago Says
> [Comment: H. C. L. may mean High Cost of Living], Page 13, Missouri.
> (GenealogyBank)
>
> "What is the reason for high prices on everything?" United States
> District Attorney Charles F. Clyne was asked the other day. His answer
> was enigmatic.
>
> 'There was a negro woman down South whose husband was rather no
> account," he said.
>
> [Comment: The woman leaves the husband. At a later time she meets him.
> He offers her "pickled pigs' feet," but she rejects them because she
> says that these days she is eating "furder up on de hog."]
>
> "We're eating too high up on the hog," Mr. Clyne concluded.
>
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>

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