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Even in Act 2 of W. S. Gilbert’s The Mikado (1885), it is used ironically. Yum-Yum is to marry Nanki-Poo, but her joy is somewhat tempered by the thought that he is to be beheaded at the end of the month. Nanki-Poo tries to cheer her up by saying that they should call each hour a day, each day a year – ‘At that rate we’ve about thirty years of married happiness before us!’ Yum-Yum (‘still sobbing’) says: ‘Yes. How time flies when one is thoroughly enjoying oneself.’ From The Scotsman (21 November 1991): ‘Can it really be a year since [Margaret Thatcher] became politically semi-detached…Doesn’t time fly when you’re having more fun than you’ve been allowed for a decade and more.’ Another laconic use of the phrase, from The Times (30 0ctober 1985): ‘I go home and look for the invoice. Find it. It was not three months ago but ten months. Doesn’t time fly when your car is falling to bits?’ Of course, ‘Doesn’t time fly?’, on its own, is a version of the ancient tempus fugit [time flies], and the original ‘doesn’t time fly when…’ is an old thought. In Shakespeare’s Othello, II.iii.369 (1604), Iago says: ‘Pleasure, and action, make the hours seem short.’

      does she…or doesn’t she? This innuendo-laden phrase began life selling Clairol hair dye in 1955. The brainchild of Shirley Polykoff (who entitled her advertising memoirs Does She…or Doesn’t She? in 1975), the question first arose at a party when a girl arrived with flaming red hair. Polykoff involuntarily uttered the line to her husband, George. As she tells it, however, her mother-in-law takes some of the credit for planting the words in her mind some twenty years previously. George told Shirley of his mother’s first reaction on meeting her: ‘She says you paint your hair. Well, do you?’ When Ms Polykoff submitted the slogan at the Foote Cone & Belding agency in New York (together with two ideas she wished to have rejected), she suggested it be followed by the phrase ‘Only her mother knows for sure!’ or ‘So natural, only her mother knows for sure’. She felt she might have to change ‘mother’ to ‘hairdresser’ so as not to offend beauty salons, and only her hairdresser knows for sure was eventually chosen. It was felt, however, that the double meaning in the main slogan would cause the line to be rejected. Indeed, Life Magazine would not take the ad. But subsequent research at Life failed to turn up a single female staff member who admitted detecting any innuendo and the phrases were locked into the form they kept for the next 18 years. ‘J’, author of The Sensuous Woman (1969), did find a double meaning, as shown by this comment: ‘Our world has changed. It’s no longer a question of “Does she or doesn’t she?” We all know she wants to, is about to, or does.’ A New York graffito, quoted in 1974, stated: ‘Only his hairdresser knows for sure.’

      does your mother know you’re out? Put-down addressed to a stupid or presumptuous young person, implying that he or she should not be around without parental supervision. Benham (1948) notes that it: ‘Occurs in verses by Gerald Griffin (author of “The Collegians”) about 1827. It is stated by Griffin’s biographer that the saying was then “a cant phrase in the Metropolis.” It occurs also in a poem in “The Mirror,” 28 April, 1838.’ A hugely popular and enduring catchphrase thereafter. Perhaps more recently a chat-up line addressed to a seemingly under-age girl.

      do frogs have watertight assholes? See IS THE POPE.

      dog See AGE BEFORE; AS LAZY AS; EVERY.

      (the) dog beneath the skin The Dog Beneath the Skin was the title of a play (1935) by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Auden (1981), the title was suggested by Rupert Doone and probable alludes to T. S. Eliot, ‘Whispers of Immortality’ (1920): ‘Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin; / And breastless creatures under ground / Leaned backwards with a lipless grin.’ Hence, also, The Skull Beneath the Skin, title of a crime novel (1982) by P. D. James.

      (a) dog collar Name applied to the distinctive white collar worn (as though back to front) by a clergyman – a clerical collar. Known as such by 1860s in the UK. Compare putting on the dog, which means putting on airs, fine clothes, and so on. This appears to be an American expression dating from the 1870s – perhaps among college students (especially at Yale) who had to wear stiff, high collars (jokily also known as dog-collars) on formal occasions. Sometimes the phrase is ‘to put on dog’, without the definite article.

      dog days Nothing to do with dogs getting hot under the collar, contracting rabies, or anything like that. The ancients applied this label to the period between 3 July and 11 August when the Dog-star, Sirius, rises at the same time as the sun. At one time, this seemed to coincide with the overwhelmingly hot days of high summer. Known as such from ancient times but in English by 1597.

      dog eat dog Ruthless, cut-throat competition. Significantly, Brewer (1923) only has the expression ‘dog don’t eat dog’ and compares it to ‘there’s honour among thieves.’ CODP has ‘dog does not eat dog’ in English by 1543 and in Latin – canis caninam non est – in Varro, De Lingua Latina. So, the principal proverb is well established and ‘dog eat dog’ a modern development to describe a situation that is so bad, a dog would eat dog in it. OED2’s earliest citation is from 1931. ‘What makes a man turn animal on a Rugby field when off it he’s gentle and softly spoken? Clarke explains: “Rugby League is a game of survival. It’s dog eat dog”’ – Sunday People (24 November 1974).

      dogged determination An alliterative inevitable, meaning ‘grimly tenacious’ (like a dog holding on to something). Known by 1902. A cliché by the mid-20th century. ‘Before Boycott’s appointment can be confirmed, the problem of reconciling his media role with the coaching job needs to be resolved. Given his dogged determination, no one should be surprised if he manages to juggle both roles – unlike his future boss, Illingworth, who had to give up his column in the Daily Express’ – The Sunday Telegraph (30 April 1995); ‘As opinion polls provided the relentless message of a ruling party up to 30 points behind Labour, a dogged determination reigned at Conservative Central Office’ – Financial Times (4 May 1995).

      (to be in the) dog house To be in disgrace, out of favour. An American expression (known by 1932), as is shown by the use of ‘dog house’ rather than ‘kennel’. It seems to be no more than coincidence that in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy (1911), it is said of Mr Darling, who literally ends up in a dog house: ‘In the bitterness of his remorse he swore that he would never leave the kennel until his children came back.’

      (a) dog in the manger Someone who will not allow another to use something that he has, although he does not use it himself. The allusion is to the fable (in Aesop) about the dog who occupied a manger and would not allow an ox or horse to come and get its hay. One version: ‘A dog, lying in a manger, would neither eat the barley herself nor allow the horse, which could eat it, to come near it.’ It is one of the shortest of the fables and does not even have a moral attached. ‘We find Eamonn de Valera, then the Irish Prime Minister, playing dog-in-the-manger by pointing out a change to the monarchy would require the sanction of the Irish Free State, still a dominion’ – The Independent (30 January 2003).

      (the) dogs bark – but the caravan passes by Meaning ‘critics make a noise, but it does not last’. Sir Peter Hall, the theatre director, was given to quoting this ‘Turkish proverb’ during outbursts of public hostility in the mid-1970s. In Within a Budding Grove – the 1924 translation of Marcel Proust’s A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs (1918) – C. K. Scott Moncrieff has: ‘The fine Arab proverb, “The dogs may bark; the caravan goes on!”’ In the film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (US 1934), ‘Mohammed Khan’ quotes a proverb, ‘The little jackal barks, but the caravan passes.’ Truman Capote entitled a book, The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places (1973).

      (looking/dressed up like a) dog’s breakfast (or dinner) When the first saying (known by 1937) suggests something scrappy and the second (known by 1934) something showy, what are we

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