Name: English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (69) Top Dog and Underdog
Uploaded: 2019-08-29T16:07:51.000Z
Duration: 3 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and  this is Word Origin 69. The word origin today or we

Past simple

actually have two words was top dog and underdog. Okay. Good

if we say that someone is a top dog.  Today,  we mean that he is that he or she

is the leader. Someone in charge,  especially in a competition or some type

of business. Somebody is the top dog.  Top dog in the company. Number-one person in

the company. In competitions, the  one considered most likely to win can also

be called the favorite.  I think favorite is more common,  if we think somebody is

likely to win. We're more likely to say the word favorite than top dog but you

could say top dog too. Okay. Let's continue. An underdog is a person,  team or

group in competitions that most people think is not likely to win the game,

competition,  election etc. Then we say somebody is the underdog. Okay. Both terms

are believed to come from the activity of dog fights in the 1800s. So they used

to have dog fights a lot.  The winner was often referred to as the

upper dog , over dog or top dog. Okay. The first two terms seem to have faded away.

So we don't really hear upper dog or over dog anymore. Although you,  you could

imagine that upper dog sounds very likely to be the opposite of underdog.

Okay. And do remember,  I don't know if anybody does remember the very , very old

cartoon and they used to have a dog that was like a Superman dog. He was called

underdog. It's  kind of strange in a way but it was it was kind of a funny little

cartoon way,  way back and I don't know though 1960s 1970s something like that.

But it was a cute cartoon. But it really was just very much the same ideas like a

Superman,  but it was called "Underdog. " Okay.  Let's continue. The first two terms. Yeah.

it seemed to fade away. The loser was known as the underdog. So that's why we still

use that term today as the one that we think is least likely to win. So we would

say this underdog. So it really all comes back to dog fights that used to be very

common in the eighteen hundreds. And here's just a couple of examples of how

we may use it today. Example number one.  Many people like to cheer for the

underdog. Yeah. We often hear this. The one that they think is less likely to win

and you know somehow it makes it more interesting if the underdog could pull

it out sometimes.. All right. And number two.  He is the top dog in the company. Yes. So

we definitely use top dog to always to ...  you know,  often to mean like the

number one person or the person in charge. Okay. Anyway,  I hope you got it . I hope it

was clear. Thank you for your time. Bye= bye.