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Phrase: Every man and his dog
Change takes a very long time to happen, and complete change takes even longer than that.
The term ‘politically correct’ (PC) was first used in 1934, yet if you look in the dictionary, most English phrases, idioms, expressions etc., are still male-based.
Today’s phrase, every man and his dog is an excellent example of this.
The Cambridge Dictionary says the definition of this phrase is ‘a lot of people.’
It doesn’t say ‘a lot of men’; it says a lot of people.
Well, males and females are people, right?
Therefore, if we are going to make an effort to be PC truly, shouldn’t it be ‘everyone and their dog’ or ‘every person and their dog?’
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If I wanted to get picky about it, why only dogs?
There are a lot of cat people who are being left out here.
If I were to say every man and his dog is sick and tired of hearing about the US election, I’m leaving out 50% of earth’s human population and 99.999% of the animals as well.
The English language has a huge variety of nuances and understandings, but it tends to leave much to the imagination.
There have to be a lot of snakes, parrots and guinea pigs who are quite fed up with the Americans, their conspiracy theories and their spray-tanned, seventy-thousand-dollar-a-year-haircuts-overweight-covid-denying-tax-avoiding-Twitter-obsessed president.
Oh well, I’m sure everyone and their pet is hoping this election will be over on November 4th.
In the meantime, they will attempt to find time for mindfulness before every man and his dog lose their minds.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 65.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.