Done up like a dog's dinner

Posted by Smokey Stover on March 02, 2005

In Reply to: Done up like a dog's dinner posted by David G on March 01, 2005

: I just read some archived stuff on a discussion on the origin of "Done up like a dog's dinner". I don't know if it's true or not, but I was told it came from the Bible story found in 2Kings 9:30-37 in which Jezebel put eye makeup on, and did her hair to look nice, and was then thrown out of a tower by her enemies and killed. When the went to find her body there was nothing left because she had been eaten by the dogs.

I had never heard this phrase, which seems rather a learned reference. Most people probably remember only that Jezebel was the archetype of the wicked woman, sometimes as a painted woman. She had painted her face (put on makeup) in order to receive Jehu, the new King of Israel, or his emissary. But Jehu ordered two of the palace eunchs, who doubtlessly feared, with reason, the wrath of Jehu, to throw her down. After she was defenestrated she was trampled by horses, and later partly eaten by dogs. Her gravest sins were not her supposed wicked behavior but her failure to enforce the worship of Jehovah as sole deity (since she came from Tyre, where Jehovah was not the sole deity), and her contumely towards the new ruler. This section of the Bible is particularly illustrative of the political bias of its compilers, whose writing was often blatantly propagandistic. SS