Etymology of “the dog’s bollocks”

Wondering idle & aloud whether the origins of that outrageous compliment “the dog’s bollocks” are to be found in a time when we appreciated the finer cuts of dog. Brewery De Klok (“The Clock”) in Zottegem in Belgium used to produce a beer called Poepentsoe. This means literally “the pig’s hole (ie posterior orifice)” but actually refers to a cut taken from the close vicinity and accepted to be the best its author had to offer. Just wondering…

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Comments

1. english sez:
   26 August 2006 at 8:52 PM

   actually, it comes from the 1970s when kids would get toys such as train or mechano sets which would generally come in two versions: box standard and box deluxe, which is (apparantly) where we get the phrases a. bog standard, and b. dog’s bollocks, work it out.

2. NRT sez:
   11 September 2006 at 12:21 PM

   Nah; that sounds bogus to me. I’d have thought it’d have been ’standard box’ and ‘deluxe box’, with corresponding slang terms. ‘World Wide Words’ (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bog1.htm) say’s there’s no recorded evidence for that source of ‘bog standard’.

   So, it’s a theory, and may be correct, but let’s not give it the status of unquestionable fact!

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