"go the whole hog" meaning in English

See go the whole hog in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-go the whole hog.ogg [Australia] Forms: goes the whole hog [present, singular, third-person], going the whole hog [participle, present], went the whole hog [past], gone the whole hog [participle, past]
Etymology: Likely a folk term from the practice of livestock and butchery; “whole hog” or (“snout to tail”) refers to letting no portion of the animal carcass go to waste. For example, skin is tanned for leather, sweetbreads are harvested, and commonly cast off pieces such as hooves are pickled. The phrase the whole hog appears in Cowper’s 1779 poem “The Love of the World Reproved”, a poem teasing Muslims about suggested ambiguity over their religious prohibition on eating pork. By 1830 the phrase had become popular across America, being used in newspapers and political campaigns. At this time it migrated across to Britain, where the phrase was adopted. Head templates: {{en-verb|go<goes,,went,gone> the whole hog}} go the whole hog (third-person singular simple present goes the whole hog, present participle going the whole hog, simple past went the whole hog, past participle gone the whole hog)
  1. (chiefly UK) To do something as entirely or completely as possible; to reserve or hold back nothing. Wikipedia link: William Cowper Tags: UK Synonyms: go whole hog [US] Synonyms (to do something unreservedly): go all out, pull out all the stops Related terms: all the way, full throttle, totus porcus, whole hog, the whole nine yards
    Sense id: en-go_the_whole_hog-en-verb-E~bv3V4f Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for go the whole hog meaning in English (3.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Likely a folk term from the practice of livestock and butchery; “whole hog” or (“snout to tail”) refers to letting no portion of the animal carcass go to waste. For example, skin is tanned for leather, sweetbreads are harvested, and commonly cast off pieces such as hooves are pickled.\nThe phrase the whole hog appears in Cowper’s 1779 poem “The Love of the World Reproved”, a poem teasing Muslims about suggested ambiguity over their religious prohibition on eating pork. By 1830 the phrase had become popular across America, being used in newspapers and political campaigns. At this time it migrated across to Britain, where the phrase was adopted.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "goes the whole hog",
      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "going the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "went the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "gone the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
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  "head_templates": [
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      },
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "If you can afford a new computer, you might as well go the whole hog and get it custom built.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1922, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, transl., Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time), translation of Du Côté de Chez Swann by Marcel Proust",
          "text": "\"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated. In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left.\" \"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she has 'burned her boats'?\" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the meaning of his phrases.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 October 14, Tom McTague, “The Liz Truss Travesty Becomes Britain’s Humiliation”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "And then, today, she went the whole hog, sacking her chancellor and abandoning even more of her plan.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do something as entirely or completely as possible; to reserve or hold back nothing."
      ],
      "id": "en-go_the_whole_hog-en-verb-E~bv3V4f",
      "links": [
        [
          "entirely",
          "entirely"
        ],
        [
          "completely",
          "completely"
        ],
        [
          "reserve",
          "reserve"
        ],
        [
          "hold back",
          "hold back"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK) To do something as entirely or completely as possible; to reserve or hold back nothing."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "all the way"
        },
        {
          "word": "full throttle"
        },
        {
          "word": "totus porcus"
        },
        {
          "word": "whole hog"
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        {
          "word": "the whole nine yards"
        }
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      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "US"
          ],
          "word": "go whole hog"
        },
        {
          "sense": "to do something unreservedly",
          "word": "go all out"
        },
        {
          "sense": "to do something unreservedly",
          "word": "pull out all the stops"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "wikipedia": [
        "William Cowper"
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/En-au-go_the_whole_hog.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "go the whole hog"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Likely a folk term from the practice of livestock and butchery; “whole hog” or (“snout to tail”) refers to letting no portion of the animal carcass go to waste. For example, skin is tanned for leather, sweetbreads are harvested, and commonly cast off pieces such as hooves are pickled.\nThe phrase the whole hog appears in Cowper’s 1779 poem “The Love of the World Reproved”, a poem teasing Muslims about suggested ambiguity over their religious prohibition on eating pork. By 1830 the phrase had become popular across America, being used in newspapers and political campaigns. At this time it migrated across to Britain, where the phrase was adopted.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "goes the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
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      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "going the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
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    },
    {
      "form": "went the whole hog",
      "tags": [
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      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "gone the whole hog",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
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    {
      "args": {
        "1": "go<goes,,went,gone> the whole hog"
      },
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "all the way"
    },
    {
      "word": "full throttle"
    },
    {
      "word": "totus porcus"
    },
    {
      "word": "whole hog"
    },
    {
      "word": "the whole nine yards"
    }
  ],
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        "British English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "If you can afford a new computer, you might as well go the whole hog and get it custom built.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1922, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, transl., Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time), translation of Du Côté de Chez Swann by Marcel Proust",
          "text": "\"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated. In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left.\" \"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she has 'burned her boats'?\" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the meaning of his phrases.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 October 14, Tom McTague, “The Liz Truss Travesty Becomes Britain’s Humiliation”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "And then, today, she went the whole hog, sacking her chancellor and abandoning even more of her plan.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do something as entirely or completely as possible; to reserve or hold back nothing."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "entirely",
          "entirely"
        ],
        [
          "completely",
          "completely"
        ],
        [
          "reserve",
          "reserve"
        ],
        [
          "hold back",
          "hold back"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK) To do something as entirely or completely as possible; to reserve or hold back nothing."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "William Cowper"
      ]
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/En-au-go_the_whole_hog.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "word": "go whole hog"
    },
    {
      "sense": "to do something unreservedly",
      "word": "go all out"
    },
    {
      "sense": "to do something unreservedly",
      "word": "pull out all the stops"
    }
  ],
  "word": "go the whole hog"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-22 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (fc4f0c7 and c937495). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.