What is the meaning of the phrase ‘dog with a bone’?
Stubborn, persistent and unyielding, with determination or single-minded focus on a particular objective.
What is the origin of the phrase ‘dog with a bone’?
The earliest recorded use I’ve been able to find of the simile ‘dog with a bone’ dates back to a novel called Splendid Follies printed for J. F. Hughes, and published in 1810. Here it was used to describe a character ensuring that his family won’t enjoy a race.
It has featured in many other works in the 1800s besides. This includes an article about the Presidential election in the The United States Gazette published February 1824, A song published in The Morning Chronicle (UK) in March 1831, another song published in The Literary Gazette in 1833, in the Nantucket Inquirer in June 1834, and in the Columbian Register in November 1837.
Since then the phrase has continued to permeate many aspects of culture, appearing in everyday conversation, and in literature and the media.
The idiom is believed to convey the innate behaviour of a dog when they have a bone. They generally become very possessive of it, holding onto it with all they’ve got, and being unwilling to give it up for anyone or anything.
This is often seen as a good metaphor to describe human behaviour in many different circumstances, such as pursuing an ambition, asserting a viewpoint, solving a problem, advocating for a cause, and so on.
Be careful not to confuse the phrase ‘dog with a bone’ with ‘dog and bone’ which is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘phone’. Similarly, don’t confuse it with ‘give a dog a bone’ which means ‘give them what they want’. There’s also another similar phrase ‘like a dog in heat’ which means very energetically and enthusiastically (especially when sexually aroused).
What are some notable uses of the phrase ‘dog with a bone’?
In Ancient Greece, Aesop wrote a fable called “The dog with the bone’, and while the book doesn’t feature the phrase ‘dog with a bone’ directly, it may have influenced its use as a metaphor for human persistence and tenacity.
Much more recently, there was a novel called ‘Dog with a Bone’ in the Nancy Drew series published in 2006, reflecting Nancy Drew’s tendency to never give up on solving a mystery.
