three-dog night-with antedating(1932)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Money talks. Good find.

The 1957 story, however, specified Aborigines rather than "hearty" [sic]
frontiersmen.

It would also appear that the 1932 story was not widely reprinted over the
years.

Also noteworthy is that the phrase doesn't show up in Australian newspapers
or books until long after 1932.

The practice, if not the English phrase must go back to the earliest days
of canine domestication. I guess the dogs call it the same thing.

JL


On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 8:49 AM, <sclements at neo.rr.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sclements at NEO.RR.COM
> Subject:      Re: three-dog night-with antedating(1932)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 4 April 1932 _Aberdeen(SD) Evening News_ 1/1
>
> DOG DAYS" is discounted on the frontier country of Australia.  They have
> their "three-dog night" over there.  It's the common expression used in
> referring to a night in winter so cold that the hearty frontiersman
> sleeping out-of-doors has to take three dogs with him for warmth.  One dog
> is used for his pillow, one for his middle and the third at his feet.
>
> Found using the paid version of GenealogyBank.
>
> Sam Clements
>
> ---- Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> > 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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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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