Hogan's Goat

Posted by ESC on April 27, 2000

In Reply to: Hogan's Goat posted by Robert Zaring on April 27, 2000

: Where did the phrase "as hosed as Hogan's goat" come from?

Charles Earle Funk, in Heavens to Betsy! and Other Curious Sayings Harper & Row, New York, 1955, has an entry for "Hogan's goat" that says when one says something is "like Hogan's goat," it means it "stinks terrifically." He says "Poor old Hogan is merely an innocent bystander in this modern Americanism. Just as with 'Hogan's brickyard,' a slang designation of a baseball diamond, the goat could be the property of Jones, Smith, or Rockefeller..."

I can't tell you why the goat went from stinking to being hosed.