Variation: upper dog
The OEDs first citation for the rare variation upper dog is from 1903 by G. Bowles in Hansards Parliamentary Debates:
I found an earlier example in the April 1881 Popular Science Monthly in “Some Notes on a Doctors Liability” by Oliver E. Lyman:
The terms from my search, seem to come from the blood-sport of bear baiting in 16th Century England. The underdog would go for the bears middle section, most likely losing meanwhile the top-dog would go for the bears jugular and be less at risk of being killed if the unconscious bear awoke and began reacting to the dogs. Book:1 Website:2
Does it come from pioneer days of sawing trees by hand? Top dog was the one on top, and clean, underdog was the one in the pit below the felled tree sawing away getting covered in sawdust.
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I found this from googling, so its validity may be questionable, but it came up fairly often.
It seems that both underdog and top dog originated from dog fighting which went on in the 19th century. The losing dog ended up on the bottom, or under the winner, who was on top.
My reference is The Times of India.
The “under dog” was the dog who lost a fight (as opposed to the winning “top dog”), and underdog has become idiomatic for the inferior person or party, or the one fighting a larger adversary.
The OED says it originates in the US and their earliest citation is the British Daily Telegraph of 1887:
I found an earlier citation from The Popular Science Monthly of April 1882, in an article called “Has Science Yet Found a New Basis for Morality?” by Professor Goldwin Smith and quoting Dr. Van Buren Denslow:
And on the next page, Smith summarises:
The “top dog” was similarly the dog that won the fight, and now figuratively refers to a winner or the best person, party or thing.
The earliest OED citation is from a 1900 edition of The Speaker: A Review of Politics:
Again, the above Popular Science Monthly antedates this, as does another I found in The Spy of the Rebellion (1883) by Allan Pinkerton:
‘Top Dog’, ‘Upper Dog’, ‘Over Dog’, and ‘Under Dog’, ‘Bottom Dog’
Some sources link the origin of these terms to Pit-Sawing. True or not, the story helps to remember the meaning of the terms. The irons that were used to hold the wood were called dogs. The senior man, who controlled the cutting, took the top handle standing on the wood. The junior, having the muscle power, took the bottom in the saw-pit below. The bottom position was much the more uncomfortable and the underdog as ended covered in sawdust.
Another theory is that the terms are related to literal dogfights in which the dog on top is clearly getting the better of the dispute and is able to impose himself on the one underneath.
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