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Screw the pooch

Posted by Bob on August 10, 2000

In Reply to: Screw the pooch posted by Ian Hall on August 10, 2000

: I heard this phrase uttered by Charleton Heston's character in the film "True Lies." The main character and his team of spies had mishandled an operation and their chief (Heston) rebukes them by saying "We really screwed the pooch on that one." Where might this expression have originated?

you'll find an earlier reference in Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff." He reports it as slang used by test pilots in the California desert during the '50s, as jet fighter aircraft were being developed and tested. The pilot who "screwed the pooch" was the one who died in the wreckage of his plane.

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