Pig's breakfast

Posted by Pamela on November 14, 2006

In Reply to: Pig's breakfast posted by Victoria S Dennis on November 13, 2006

: : is pig's breakfast interchangeable with dog's? when did people start saying pig's breakfast?

: They are interchangeable, because until very recently pigs were fed on "swill", which was a mixture of human food leavings, and dogs would be fed either the family's leavings or scraps of meat collected by the butcher as unfit for sale as human food. In both cases the animal's meal was an unappetising mess. I suspect "dog's dinner" is the oldest form, as it's relatively recently that anybody thought of feeding dogs more than once a day.

Yes, I've only heard "dog's dinner" and not "dog's breakfast". If you have a dog and feed it once a day (surely the norm?) then you feed it at night so you can include the food scraps from the family meal. Pamela

See the meaning and origin of the phrase 'dog's breakfast'.