A book perhaps. It might have had a good reputation, but it wasn’t really what you were expecting.

You could be accused of buying a pig in a poke.

A pig in a poke is buying something without having seen it or being sure what it is. A poke was a bag. Pocket was a little bag. The phrase goes back to at least 1386.

The trouble was a buyer would think he was buying a pig and then the seller would put a cat, or a puppy, in the bag, telling the buyer not to open the bag because the pig might run away. Similar stories exist today, but they don’t call it a pig in a poke. More like beating the tax man.

A hog, a swine, a boar, a porker or a sucking pig or even a porker all come from pig. Pig goes back to at least 1225, but it was then usually spelt as pigge or as pygge.

Shakespeare had several goes at pigs. In a Comedy of Errors he said: “The pigge, quoth I, is burn’d”. In A Merchant of Venice he said: “Some men there are love, not a gaping pigge.”

In 1927, under Dialect Notes there appears: “Pig, a woman – sottish, surly, sho has sunk to the lowest level of prostitution. The bum who keeps a pig rents her out to others.”

In addition to a pig in a poke you could have a pig’s ear, or make a pig’s ear out of a molehill, you could hold open the poke to prove the pig is inside, pig iron, pig dog, pig’s face, pig bed and so on with columns of words with pig in them. Of course, you have all heard of pigs might fly or make a pig of yourself. 

We might think that the term for a policeman is very modern, but it has been in existence since the early 19th century.

Piggesnye, a term of endearment for one’s sweetheart, literally a darling little pig’s eye, was originated by Chaucer, who is also credited with inspiring the tradition of sending love notes on Saint Valentine’s Day.

lauriebarber,com; lbword@midcoast.com.au