three-dog night

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Here is a passage in a 1910 book that described gaining warmth from
three dogs during a very cold night. However, the phrase "three dog
night" was not used.

Year: 1910
Title: History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada: From Lake
Superior to the Pacific (1659-1895)
Volume: 1
Author: The Rev. A. G. Morics (Adrien Gabriel Morice)
Publisher: The Musson Book Company, Toronto
Quote Page: 320

http://books.google.com/books?id=kuvPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22the+heat%22#v=snippet&

[Begin excerpt]
Here we have to acknowledge our inability to express in a few words
the incredible sufferings and hardships of that voyage, which would
take several pages to properly describe. To sleep in the open at
forty-five to fifty degrees below zero, with two or three dogs
crouching on one's person for the sake of the heat they emit, is
scarcely episcopal. The prelate's costume by daytime was not more in
accordance with the canons.
[End excerpt]

Garson


On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      three-dog night
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A journalist has prompted me to look into this phrase.
>
> So everybody knows it comes from Aboriginal Australians sleeping with Fido
> to keep warm in the desert.
>
> Everybody, that is, but OED and the Web posters who think it refers to
> Eskimos instead.  Eskimos have more dogs and it's colder, right? So why
> wouldn't they think that?
>
> What nobody knows is that "three-dog night" first appeared in English in
> 1957. My lingua-spidey sense tells me that it not a translation from any
> Aboriginal language, but a phrase that popped into the head of the
> researcher being interviewed or writing a press release.
>
> Read the North American Newspaper Alliance dispatch at NewspaperArchive
> (Steubenville Herald Star, July 23, 1957).
>
> The relevant passage: "A chilly night is known as a 'three-dog night.' A
> 'five-dog night' is really cold."
>
> This fun fact was often reprinted as a newspaper filler for the next ten or
> eleven years.
>
> The band first performed in May, 1968.
>
> JL
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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