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Dog end

Posted by Gary Martin on October 27, 2007

In Reply to: Dog end posted by pamela on October 27, 2007

: : I searched for weeks but cants find the origins of the phrase 'dog end' as in the cigarette butt

:
: allwords.com says it's from the 1930s, but that's all. Pamela

Partridge's Dictionary of Slang asserts that it is from the 1920s and surmises that it is a corruption of 'docked end', i.e. a cigarette that has been nipped off and kept for later.

It could also be one of the many uses of 'dog' as a prefix, denoting a bad or mongrel variety of something - 'dog-Latin', 'dog's breakfast' etc.

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

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