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Priggish: Is "living high on the hog" or "living high off the hog" the proper idiom? Random House Dictionary's Word of the Day doesn't elucidate, but offers some clues from the origins of this expression.

Living high on the hog meant originally that you ate what were regarded as the superior cuts of meat, the ones on the higher parts of the animal (the cuts above?)--pork chops, hams, etc.--as against the belly, feet, knuckles, jowls, and the like. Someone who lives/eats high off/on the hog is therefore, in the extended sense, pretty well off. A 1966 citation is typical: "That had been a good year, a year of living high off the hog."

So, properly speaking, is it "on" or "off" the hog? Common sense would indicate that, based on the origins of the idiom, the correct version is high "on" the hog. The reference is not to living off the hog, but to living off the cuts high on the hog. You can see how unthinking folks might get confused. Still, most people use the correct formulation of the idiom. Google searches for the expression "high on the hog" show 18,200 results, while "high off the hog" shows a relatively insignificant 1,630 results.

Posted by abnu on Friday, March 19, 2004 @ 6:19 AM [ + ]

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