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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: makin_dough99 who wrote (22740)	3/19/1999 4:15:00 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

I'll find out.

To: makin_dough99 who wrote (22740)	3/19/1999 5:06:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

"Get your goat" means to rile, anger or get you dander up. To really piss someone off. It came from teasing a goat. Its what the famous SI pig does for a living. floyd

To: makin_dough99 who wrote (22740)	3/20/1999 2:47:00 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

OK, come on and "Get your goat" With all thy getting, grab that goat. Dear Evan: After ranting to a friend about the conduct of a co-worker, the friend replied, "Don't let her get your goat, or whatever the Army equivalent is." (I'm an Army retiree. He's former Navy.) But it got me to wondering where the "get your goat" phrase originated. -- Steve Harper Fayetteville, NC. Y'know, it took me a minute to figure out what you meant by that Army/Navy thing, until I remembered that the goat is the Navy football team mascot. I seem to remember that the Army equivalent is a donkey, but I may be wrong. You can tell what a big football fan I am. And I went to Ohio State, too. It seems odd, since the goat is such a (usually) benign and placid creature, that it would be found in a phrase meaning "to annoy to the point of exasperation." Adding to the oddness is the fact that no one seems to know where the phrase came from. There is one theory, espoused by H.L. Mencken among others, that ties the phrase to the world of horse racing. It used to be common practice, goes this theory, to stable goats with race horses, trainers believing that the mere presence of the goats would help keep the excitable thoroughbreds calm. If an unscrupulous gambler were to arrange for the removal of a certain goat from a certain horse's stall the day before a race, the horse might be so flustered by the absence of its hircine pal that it would lose the race. The gambler would thus have "gotten the horse's goat." Unfortunately, the first occurrence of the phrase in print, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, was in 1908. Since goats are no longer (if they ever were) housed with race horses, the practice must have arisen near the beginning of the 20th century -- and been abandoned shortly thereafter -- for that theory to be true. A more likely origin of the phrase lies in an earlier (1904) citation in the Random House dictionary, for "goat" as prison slang for "anger." I think this may be the key. After all, goats do, with much provocation, get angry. To bring out the "goat" in someone may take some doing, but will eventually have dramatic results.