hair of the dog
4
7.7
- idiom
- Informal
:
cura de la resaca
- Forget the full English breakfast and hair of the dog; have a spicy wake-up with a cup of hot or cold chili chai.
- a little hair of the dog
Examples
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Time for a little hair of the dog that bit me, Lloyd.
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They slunk off, subdued by hair of the dog, their only cure.
Fiction book (2000) -
Time for a little hair of the dog.
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Maybe you need a little hair of the dog--
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A little hair of the dog for ya?
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A little hair of the dog.
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You need the hair of the dog.
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A little hair of the dog is not a bad thing if you stick to one.
Fiction book (1998) -
You know, a little hair of the dog to subdue those morning shakes and fear of the known.
Blog text (14) -
After a wild party, some people swear that a bit of hair of the dog helps their hangover.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
hair + of + the + dog
The meaning 'an alcoholic drink taken to relieve a hangover' cannot be predicted from the literal constituents 'hair', 'of', 'the', 'dog' — the phrase is an historical/metaphorical idiom (from 'the hair of the dog that bit you') rather than a compositional combination. A B1 learner knowing the individual words would be unlikely to infer this hangover‑cure sense without prior exposure, so it is opaque.
Etymology
The phrase hair of the dog comes from an old idea that a hair from the dog that bit you could help the wound. One popular story says this idea was moved to drinking, so hair of the dog now means having a drink 'to relieve a hangover'.