Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Dog in the manger

In the late 1990s, when I was doing research for my first book SILVER LIES, I ran across the phrase dog in the manger in an 1879 letter.*** It appeared in a passage regarding the (in)famous Colorado railroad war, in which  two railroad companies "battled it out" to see who would be first to reach the silver-mining boomtown of Leadville.

Here's the phrase, in context:

The AT & St Fe RR [Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad] would have reached Leadville by the Middle of September if it had not been for the interference of the D & R G RR [Denver & Rio Grande Railroad], the latter road has been playing the part of the 'Dog in the Manger'. There is a strong feeling growing against the D & R G RR and its whole course has been a matter of condemnation for months back....

I had absolutely no idea what dog in the manger might mean, and this was long before I could just turn to the internet or a bookshelf of "slang dictionaries" to look it up. Ah, but that was then, and this is now...

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According to The Idioms, dog in the manger has several meanings:

• one who prevents others from enjoying something despite having no use for it
• spiteful and mean-spirited someone who keeps something that they do not want in order to prevent someone else from getting it
• a person who selfishly keeps something that he or she does not really need or want so that others may not use or enjoy it

World Wide Words also has an entry for this phrase and describes its origins harken waaaay back:

... The allusion is to one of Aesop’s fables, written about 600BC, in which a dog was taking a nap in a manger. When an ox came and tried to eat the hay in the manger, the dog barked furiously, snapped at him and wouldn’t let him get at his food, food that, of course, was useless to the dog. At last the ox gave up and went away muttering, “Ah, people often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves”.

But wait a minute! The Phrase Finder digs deeper into the origins of dog in the manger and ascertains that this particular story was not one of Aesop's originals, but was added in a 1460 collection. Even so, the entry continues, it's an old tale:

... While not being included by Aesop, the story itself is ancient, having been cited in several early Greek texts and in English in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, circa 1390:
Though it be not the hound's habit
To eat chaff, yet will he warn off
An ox that commeth to the barn
Thereof to take up any food. 

I'm still not clear on why the D&RG would have been considered as the dog in the manger in this particular disagreement, but at least I am now well-schooled in what the phrase means, thanks to all the wonderful resources at my (keyboard) fingertips!

And so ends this Slang-o-rama dog tale/tail... 😉
Public Domain, Link

*** You can read more about this letter and the inspiration I draw from the past in a Blood Red Pencil post titled: I Can Use This: Inspiration from the past.

https://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2023/02/i-can-use-this-inspiration-from-past.html

LAST CHANCE! $1.99 for Silver Lies, all April

Click here for special ebook deal.

Win a copy of the first in the Silver Rush mysteries or the most recent—your choice!

I tried something new with the guest post "A Rude Awakening to a Day in the Life of Inez Stannert," now live at Dru's Book Musings—writing Inez from first-person point of view (I, mine, etc.). My "comfort zone" in writing Inez is to use close third-person point of view (i.e., looking at the world through Inez's eyes, but still in third person (she, her, etc.).
Experimenting is a good thing, right?
If curiosity is not enough to make you click the link, there's also this:
I am giving away a copy of SILVER LIES (the first in the Silver Rush series) or WHAT GOLD BUYS (the newest, just-released fifth book)... All you have to do to enter the drawing is leave a comment with the post at Dru's by September 15.

So, what are you waiting for? Check it out and see what yanked Inez out of a deep slumber... a rude awakening indeed!

... a few minutes later: "What's that noise??"

Leaden Skies now Kindle-ized

It's a winning hand!

Leaden Skies joins Silver Lies and Iron Ties on Kindle. Leaden Skies also comes in an Audible Audio edition.
And... here's an interesting hiccup: You can find a less expensive Kindle edition of Iron Ties on amazon, mistitled Iron Tears. Not sure how that happened, but if you want to save yourself a dollar and four cents, check it out.

I write like...

I read about the "I write like" site on author Mark Coggins' blog site—Riordan's Desk, and just had to try it for my own books.

First up, the opening two pages from Silver Lies:

I write like
Mary Shelley

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Well, that's interesting. How about the opening to Iron Ties?

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Really?
Okay, let's try Leaden Skies:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Nobokov gain??
That's pretty strange. The only thing I've read by Nabokov is Lolita, a novel that made/makes me wince. However, Wikipedia says that Lolita "exhibit(s) the love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works." I like word play, definitely, and synesthetic detail gets a thumbs up from me.

Time for an experiment.

For the first evaluation of Silver Lies (above), I'd put in just a portion of the prologue. Let's try the whole prologue (luckily, I have all the beginnings for all of my books available to read on my website. Makes copy/paste easy). To my surprise, adding those extra pages nixes Mary Shelley and instead...

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Now that's a bit daunting.
I surely hope they mean James Joyce as in The Dubliners, and not James Joyce as in Ulysses (a book one needs a map, a trail of string, and a course in Joyce to figure out).

Okay. I have Book Four underway. Gotta check that out.
(I'm almost afraid to do this.)
Let's try the first chapter. (Please, oh please, not some incredibly hard-to-read author of the distant past...)

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hmmmm. My experience with Silver Lies makes me leery of this pronouncement, based as it is on just a few pages.
I decide to plug in the first three chapters, and see what happens.

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I guess that means my writing is consistent for Book #4, at least throughout the beginning. I like Vonnegut... or did, when I read him (a long time ago now). Wikipedia describes his "voice" as "characterized by wild leaps of imagination and a deep cynicism, tempered by humanism." I'm not sure why Book #4 brings up Vonnegut instead of Mary Shelley/James Joyce/Vladimir Nabokov. But the words flow and the book takes shape, almost apart from me. Or as Vonnegut said: "So it goes."

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Leadville 1879

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas 1879 is of particular interest to me, being that this is when the tale of Silver Lies begins. According to The History of Leadville and Lake County, Colorado, the Tabor Opera House, newly opened but a short while before, was clipping along with performances of The Long Branch, The Rich of New York, The Two Orphans, and more. In addition, Thomas Kemp’s new variety theater, the Grand Central, opened on December 10th. The December 11, 1879, edition of the Leadville Chronicle had this to say:

Although this immense building yet lacks much of completion both outside and in, it was thrown open to the public last evening as announced. Hundreds of our citizens visited it for the first time on this occasion . . . . it is without doubt the largest and best arranged variety theatre in the entire West . . . . The place is already brilliantly lighted with gas, and we are informed by Mr. Kemp that only about one-half of the number of jets have been put in. Although well lighted, the heating of the place was a miserable failure. It was simply bitter cold in the boxes, on the stage and every nook and corner, save within a few feet of the stoves in front, and audience, actors and management shivered and trembled as if with ague. Many left the house before the entertainment was over solely on this account. It was simply a huge game of “freeze out,” in which the clerk of the weather held the winning hand. Mr. Kemp promises to remedy this by putting in more stoves to-day.

I found a number of things intriguing in this passage: The numbers of people (!hundreds!) that showed up on opening night (a Wednesday). The gaslights, already installed. The intense cold. The description of the cold is a reminder to me that, even in those public places crammed with people, the chill of a Leadville winter was difficult to overcome.

More about the Grand Central in my next post.

Take your chance on winning Silver or Lead

Library Manager/Book Reviewer Lesa Holstine is running a drawing on her blog Lesa's Book Critiques to win a signed copy of either Silver Lies (the first of the Silver Rush series) or of Leaden Skies (the most recent). So, if you're interested in "taking a gamble" on the Silver Rush, head over to her post "Winners and the Silver Rush" and follow her instructions on how to enter. While you're there, you should peruse her book reviews ... You may find a whole more to add to your to-be-read pile!

... And I really do intend to post about 4th of July in Leadville long ago. It's just that some project deadlines have caught up with me as of late. Hope to hit the "all clear" next week!

BPP (Blatant Publisher Promotion)

. . . Not to be confused with BCP (blatant chocolate promotion) or BSP (blatant self-promotion), I'm going to take this post to indulge in some BPP (blatant publisher promotion). Here's a round of applause and hearty huzzahs to my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, which just gave away 43,000 books to the Central Florida Schools! Is that cool or what?


The Press's first-ever annual Great Mystery Book Giveaway is part of the National Education Association’s Read Across America program. You can download the press release and read about it here. Makes me proud to be a member of the PPP posse!

Hmmm. Wonder if there were any copies of Iron Ties or Silver Lies in that huge stack o' books?

Okay, the science/technical writer part of my brain just can't leave it at that. I had to calculate how tall a stack of books that might be, if they were stacked up like the little image to the left. Let's assume each book is about one inch thick. That's 43,000 inches, which is 3,583 feet, which is . . . holy guacamole . . . about 2/3 of a mile (0.678655 mile to be precise, which would be a skyscraper of about 358 stories tall, assuming a story is 10 feet).

That's a whole lot of books!

Hurray for the Press!