“Faithful as a dog”

3 years ago

This week I have another piece of news for you from the Polski Daily! 

It is hard to say why and how did “dog” get into Polish language in its current form, but one thing for sure is that we have plenty of sayings, phrasal verbs and proverbs about it!  
There is no one theory about whether the word “pies” comes from the old Slavic language or from Latin. How many linguists, that many theories! ;)  

1. czuć się jak zbity pies - „to feel like a beaten dog” - to feel terrible, hurt, treated unfairly;
2. francuski piesek - to be „a French dog” - an upleasent way of calling someone who 	acts too dramatic, too picky, moody and oversensitive about 	themselves;
3. łgać jak pies – „to lie like a dog” - to lie barefacedly;
4. pies ogrodnika – „the gardener’s dog” - someone egoistic, who won’t let 	anybody else have something they don’t want for themselves;
5. zdechł pies – „the dog died” - a situation when everything is lost, when there is nothing you can do about it;

There are many many more of these kind of sayings in Polish and most of them are negative. Are there any positive ones? Yes, there is one: „to be faithful as a dog” - to be loyal and devoted!  

Cheers!
Dominika