What does it mean to be ‘fit as a butcher’s dog’?

Boris and the butcher’s dog

Who first coined the phrase ‘as fit as a butcher’s dog’? It has been traced to Lancashire. It is not the only quality attached to butcher’s dogs, however — such animals were perhaps widely observed as a result of customers having to entertain themselves somehow while the butcher prepared their cuts, and a dog gave them something to watch. A variant has someone as ‘happy as a butcher’s dog’. John Ray, in his collection of English proverbs from 1670, describes the expression ‘as surly as a butcher’s dog’. John Camden Hotten, in his Dictionary of Modern Slang (1859), mentions ‘to lie like a butcher’s dog’ — in other words to keep still while surrounded by temptation — a quality perhaps less associated with our Prime Minister.

Worth a shot

Up to half the UK population, according to a poll, could refuse to take a Covid-19 vaccine. How does that compare with the take-up of other vaccines in 2018/19?

DTaP/IPV/HiB (diphtheria/tetanus/polio) by 12 months | 92.1%