Published: 08/06/21
I’m in the process of extending the kinds of things I write about here, and I really enjoy learning the origins of sayings, so let’s combine these two things.
Our first phrase is “Hair of the Dog”, referring to drinking alcohol when hungover to help reduce the effects of the hangover.
According to this site, the original phase is “Hair of the dog that bit you“, and comes from medieval times, where people believed that if you were bitten by a rabid dog it could be cured by applying some of the dogs hair to the wound.
It seems this is not an effective treatment (who knew?), but in the end, neither is drinking on a hangover. I reckon this makes it a pretty good origin story for the phrase.
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