There’s a phrase I enjoy (in modified form) to describe when my middle daughter employs her black arts to irritate me in some simple, but effective way: “She has my goat in her pocket.”
The classic saying, “to get your goat,” basically means: to irritate; annoy; make someone feel bad; a successful tease.
According to several sources, including idiom.com and The Phrase Finder, its idiomatic debut stems from a story reporting on a burst water pipe in The Stevens Point Daily Journal, a newspaper in Wisconsin, from May 1909:
“Wouldn’t that get your goat? We’d been transferring the same water all night from the tub to the bowl and back again.”
Its export across the pond is listed in 1924, found within the story, “The White Monkey,” by English author John Galsworthy: “That had got the chairman’s goat! – Got his goat? What expressions they utilized these days!”
The consensus origin story goes something like this: goats were set with racehorses to keep them quiet. At the point when never-do-wells who needed the pony to race removed it, that is, they ‘got somebody’s goat,’ the horse ended up unsettled and ran badly.
It’s noted few linguists believe the idiom was born solely from the horse racing adage, but there does seem to be some calming effect goats have when kept in a shared stable with their equine pals.
Or, that’s what owners believe because several etymology sites reference this story, adding competitor owners used to bribe the stable employees to steal the goat at night before the final racing day.
An alternate story, according to dictionary.com, travels further back to 1904, citing an indirect origin within the publication of a book called “Life in Sing Sing,” authored by No. 1,500, and that “goat” was used as a slang term for anger.
Either way, it’s a great phrase that is widely understood to mean, “pissing somebody off on purpose.” At least, that’s what my middle child achieves when I see my goat in her pocket!
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