EveCP#4

Date/Time: September 11, 2018/6:45PM

Location: outside CIES 

Topic discussed: American English Idioms

Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: While talking about the life of American expats in Mexico, Patrick & I had another educational and fun discussion of American idioms. This time we used the phrase “to live high on the hog”. I must admit I would have never guessed the meaning of this expression, but, thanks to Patrick’s explanation, it all makes sense. To live high on the hog means, that someone lives a comfortable life. The origin of this expression takes its root in the concept of the food chain: the better cuts of meat are located on the top part of an animal’s body (a hog in this particular case). This way, those, who eat the best meat (i.e. the wealthy), “live high on the hog”.  While the opposite is true for the poor people, who would eat the lesser quality mean from the lower parts of an animal's body. We jokingly compared this phrase to the expression “to be high on one’s horse”, which means to be arrogant. Ironically, sometimes these two colloquialisms can describe one person. This was another valuable piece of information; both linguistically and culturally.