I was hoping someone else may have made this leap on putsch. After reading about Hitler's attempted putsch, I realized he had actually "screwed the putsch" - and thought that maybe our English version was just a bastardization of the German. Certainly in usage, it is closer to a failed attempt at something big than intimate relations with a canine.
Forive a senile old codger who can't spend much time interpreting others' threads because he doesn't have that much left. To "screw the pooch" is of course a very common expression, but to sub "putsch" is indeed very rare, as in
Jennifer's History and Stuff: Ask JenI tried doing a search for "screw the putsch" and got nowhere, but one can imagine why it might happen that the phrase, as written, would always be the ...
jenlars.mu.nu/archives/004760.html
Sorry, didn't realize I was being too oblique so as to require interpretation. No wonder I normally do not participate.
It is U as in "put," not as in "pooch." If screw is used in vernacular German it is likely a post-war, American import.
Welcome, mcmaine.
Anna I've heard it used in a humorous way to describe an embarassing error. "Boy, you really screwed the pooch on that one!"
It is, I suppose, unseemly to admit any familiarity with this phrase. But ... when I have heard it used, it is usually in the sense of "wasting time" or "goofing off."
I heard it to mean the same as Alex - having made an embarassing error, something you really should have known better not to do.
Father Steve, a colleague of mine uses the seemingly-synonymous (and equally pornographic) expression "dicking the dog" to mean to waste time, goof off, or work in a very inefficient manner. But the uses are distinct around here: dicking the dog is one thing, screwing the pooch is another.
I'm familiar with "dicking around" and use the phrase myself. At the USMA, they commonly used the phrase "to dick" meaning "to screw," as in
"Johnson messed things up so bad he dicked the rest of us over as well."
Also from Urban Dictionary (a highly subjective source I might add):
screw the pooch to fuck things up royally; originally used by U.S. naval aviators to mean "crash one's plane into the water"
dick the dog Navy slang for fucking off, dicking around, being a slacker.
Of note, the colleague I originally referred to is in fact a former Navy officer.
Alex: True UD contains much drek. However it is often the only quick source for a neologism, and can depend upon as about the only reliable source when a def is either reflected in several followups or has a large majority of thumbs up
