Hello and welcome to another Fantastic Phrase brought to you by Ethan’s English Cafe.com, the first step on your road to fluency! On today’s fantastic Phrase we will start looking at some idioms involving animals, today we’ll be focusing on man’s best friend, the dog. The four idioms we’ll look at are “Hair of the dog that bit you”, “In the dog house”, “Tail wagging the dog” and “Dog eat Dog”.

Have you ever been out for your birthday or out with some new clients and been pushed to drink more alcohol than is good for you? How do you feel the next day? Terrible. This horrible feeling the day after a night of drinking is called a “Hangover”, there are many cures for hangovers and it seems like everyone has their own personal favourite, however there is one cure which never fails and it’s called The hair of the dog that bit you. What it means is that when you wake up and feel terrible, drink some more! Of course this is actually a terrible idea and will ruin your health and your mind. A much better cure is to just drink large amounts of water before you go to bed.

If you do spend a night out drinking and come home very late, your wife or husband might not be so happy with you and you might end up in the dog house. To end up in the dog house means to have your wife or husband angry at you. If they are angry at you, you probably won’t be able to sleep in the same bed so you might have to sleep out in the dog house. Hopefully your spouse isn’t so mean as to make you literally sleep in the dog house, in fact most people in the dog house just sleep on the couch.

If your children try to put you in the dog house you can say that it seems to be a case of the tail wagging the dog. This phrase means something less important controlling something that is more important. Like if a small group of people control the entire government of a country you could say that it is the tail wagging the dog as a small group of people aren’t stronger than the government so they shouldn’t be able to control it so easily.

But sometimes, especially in politics, the tail does seem to wag the dog, this is because politics seems to be dog eat dog. Dog eat dog is used to show that the world is a very cruel and uncaring place. Many people will claim that business is a dog eat dog world where people will do anything to survive.

While the hair of the dog that bit you will help your headache it will probably also ensure you get put in the dog house, just don’t let your children put you in the dog house as that would be the tail wagging the dog and while business may be dog eat dog sometimes, family shouldn’t be.

So there we go, four idioms involving dogs in some way, hope you have enjoyed them and learned a couple new phrases! For Ethan’s English Cafe.com this is Ethan Strauss saying thanks for listening and see you next time!

(Please post any words you don’t know in the comments below and we will translate them)