We all know that words change their meaning over time, but did you know that phrases can too? This is the case with ‘dog eat dog world.’ If you were wondering, it is not, as many people have thought, a ‘doggy dog world’ – that’s just an understandable result of simple mishearing.
In either case, the saying is taken to mean, ‘it’s rough out there’ – and is applied to any situation in which rivalries or environments are seen as cutthroat or extremely competitive – one in which every participant is out for their own gain.
THE ORIGINS OF ‘DOG EAT DOG WORLD’
The origins of this colorful phrase date back to ancient Rome and the writings of the noted scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro, who lived during the first century BCE, specifically his work, De Lingua Latina, which translates as “On the Latin Language.” In it, Varro analyzes the development and usage of Latin words and grammar, from their original roots through to his contemporary times. De Lingua Latina, unsurprisingly, remains a cornerstone of any study concerning the Latin language, and therefore many students would have come across Varro’s record of the then-popular expression, ‘canis caninam non est’ or ‘a dog does not eat a dog.’ The meaning of this phrase is almost the opposite of our modern ‘dog eat dog world,’ suggesting as it does that there are standards of behavior that even a lowly dog (sorry, dogs) would not stoop to.
This usage continued for centuries and can be found in the writings of the Dutch theologian, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (often referred to simply as Erasmus), who lived from 1466 to 1536. In fact, it seems that it wasn’t until the 19th century that the term altered to its now familiar form. In 1813, a lawyer writing in the influential British magazine, The Examiner, noted: “All the trade and commerce we are to have is among one another: if anybody makes money, he must make it, not by his enterprise in foreign commerce, but out of his own countrymen. ‘Dog eat dog,’ is now our commercial motto and practice; no duties being collectible from foreign commerce, it is very clear that all the money wanted by the government must be produced by taxes.”
‘A DOG DOES NOT EAT A DOG’
Nobody can be certain if this marks the exact moment the phrase as we know it came into being, but ‘a dog does not eat a dog’ was known to be the dominant form for decades. Thus, we have a rare case of one phrase being transformed into its opposite. And ‘doggy dog’? Well, it has been noted that the popular rapper Snoop Dogg’s 1993 single, “Doggy Dogg World,” might have something to do with the mix-up!