Gambler (cassette tape sleeve notes): ‘They are of the opinion that, when it comes to Italian opera, Pavarotti is the dog’s bollocks.’Īnd, in Kick the Bucket and Swing the Cat: The Balderdash & Piffle Collection of English Words, and their Curious Origins ( BBC Books, 2008), Alex Games explains: The quotation in the 3 rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows: The earliest known occurrence of the dog’s bollocks is from-or related to-the 1986 version of The Gambler, a musical by Peter Brewis, Bob Goody and Mel Smith, first staged at Hampstead Theatre, London, on 15 th April of that year. The phrase the bollocks is first recorded as an expression of praise for the Yamaha TZ750 in the British magazine Super Bike of September 1981:Įxclusive: We test Britain’s only road-going TZ 750 In the 3 rd edition (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1949) of A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Eric Partridge had recorded dog’s ballocks only in the sense ‘ colon-dash’:ĭog’s ballocks. An exclamation mark: authors’ and journalists’: C. in the phrase ‘ It sticks out like a dog’s ballocks’, said of something that the speaker considers is patently obvious: low: since ca. The following are the entries dog’s ballocks and dog’s prick in the 8 th edition (Routledge, 1984) of Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, edited by Paul Beale-incidentally, dog’s prick is absent from the above-mentioned edition of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:ĭog’s ballocks. 1920”, but without giving any attestation).
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– it sticks out like a dog’s ballocks is recorded in the 8 th edition (Routledge, 1984) of Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, edited by Paul Beale-this signifies that it sticks out like a dog’s ballocks predates the 8 th edition by several years (Paul Beale goes as far as writing that it dates from “ ca. – the bollocks is attested in this sense in 1981, the dog’s bollocks in 1986 In typography, a colon dash (:-) UK, 1961ġ The New-Zealand born lexicographer Eric Honeywood Partridge (1894-1979) first published A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in 1937.Ģ In this respect, it is interesting to remark that the British-English phrase a racing dog’s bollocks, attested in 1988, denotes something that protrudes.įor the explanation given in The New Partridge Dictionary to be plausible, the phrase it sticks out like a dog’s ballocks must predate the use of the dog’s bollocks/ the bollocks in the sense ‘ the most excellent’. The same edition mentioned the use of dog’s ballocks in a different sense: However, an explanation was given in Volume 1: A – I of The New Partridge 1 Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge, 2006), by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor:ĭog’s bollocks dog’s ballocks the bollocks nounĪnything considered to be the finest, the most excellent, the best UK, 1989ĭerived from the phrase ‘ It sticks out like a dog’s ballocks’ 2 said of something that the speaker considers obvious, hence the sense of ‘someone or something that sticks out from the rest’. The origin of this use of the dog’s bollocks/ the bollocks is obscure. However, since the latter phrase is attested in 1986, and the former in 1981, it is also possible that the bollocks actually predates the dog’s bollocks as a superlative.
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The Oxford English Dictionary (3 rd edition – 2008) says that the bollocks is a shortening of the dog’s bollocks.
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(Remark: I have presented the origin of American-English synonyms such as the bee’s knees and the frog’s eyebrows in “the cat’s whiskers”, and all that jazz.) The British-English slang phrase the dog’s bollocks, also the bollocks, means the very best, the acme of excellence.