"Screwed the pooch"--anybody heard this expression?

[raccoon]

I heard a co-worker say that yesterday, "Joe screwed the pooch." (Joe had double-booked a meeting room.)

[bertha katzenengel]

1. Yup. Heard it in a movie: "The Right Stuff." n/t

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind. Right before Gus' flight.

When he drops in a wine cooler shaped like a space capsule into his drink (foreshadowing his actual capsule sinking in the ocean the next day.) "Let's just hope you don't screw the pooch."

What a great, great movie.

[bertha katzenengel]

9. Yep. GREAT movie.

One of my top ten.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

10. I'd probably put it in my Top 10, too.

When I first watched it as a kid, I immediately had an "astronaut" phase for a couple of years after that.

Nothing can beat Alan Shepard's wise supplication on the top of the rocket, though. "Dear Lord, please don't let me f**k up." "What did you say there, copy?" "I said everything is a-okay!"

[bertha katzenengel]

19. LOL

I love that movie.

Sigh... you watched it as a kid. I was 20 when it hit the screen. If nothing else, time passes.

[5thGenDemocrat]

21. "The Right Stuff" is probably my favorite movie, too

To this day, when someone asks me how I'm doing, I reply, as did Chuck Yeager, "Oh, just about right."
John
And I'm old enough to remember when the real Alan Shepard and John Glenn and the rest of the guys sat atop the candles. I suppose folks my age still look at the Mercury astronauts (and, by extension, their Soviet counterparts) as heroes.
You're right, Bertha -- time passes, and faster every year.

[Orsino]

14. That dates it to the early sixties, if not before.

Seemed to be a pilot thing, but who knows where/when it originated?

[XemaSab]

2. It's a brilliant yet horrible expression

:o

[petronius]

17. I was hearing (and using) it for years before I actually stopped to think about it

Then I was like "did WHAT to the WHAT!?" Still use the expression, however...

[Carnea]

3. Very Common original Military definition below

The original military term (with an asterisk which I've substituted
for a vowel) was "f*cked the dog," which generally referred to
military men goofing off on the job, rather than to catastrophic
errors:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=350436

[NJmaverick]

4. I have heard it

Etymology

The term was first documented in the early "Mercury" days of the US space program. It came there from a Yale graduate named John Rawlings who helped design the astronauts' space suits. The phrase is actually a bastardisation of an earlier, more vulgar and direct term which was slang for doing something very much the wrong way, as in "you are fucking the dog!" At Yale a friend of Rawlings', the radio DJ Jack May (a.k.a. "Candied Yam Jackson") amended this term to "screwing the pooch" which was simultaneously less vulgar and more pleasing to the ear.

The term, however, did not enter the popular lexicon until Tom Wolfe used it in his book about the space program "The Right Stuff" where is was used to describe a supposed mistake by astronaut Gus Grissom.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch

[raccoon]

5. Thanks for the info. I didn't know wiktionary existed! nt

[madrchsod]

6. yes.... it`s used in polite circles

where the obvious meaning would go over like a "lead balloon"

[YankeyMCC]

7. Sure lots of times

I think it has military origins but I don't know for sure, so maybe that's why I've heard it so often while I was in the Air Force

On edit: Wiki says it entered popular culture with "The Right Stuff" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch

[Richardo]

11. My in-laws say "f*ck the bunny"

This makes me laugh.

[ashling]

12. Yes, but I could have happily lived the rest of my life without hearing it again

Thank you very much :grr:

[av8rdave]

13. We used it in the military all the time

[Orsino]

15. Literally, it seems to imply...

...not merely doing something wrong, but embarrassingly wrong.

[av8rdave]

20. It does indeed

[DS1]

16. I've only heard it in corporate environments, never in the military

But I did see a DILLIGAF bumper sticker the other day :D

[Starbucks Anarchist]

18. Yes.