dog’s meat, noun phrase

Origin:
See quotation 1963.
In urban (especially township) English: an ironic name given to inferior meat of the cheapest cut, as bought for servants by employers. Cf. the offensive expression boy’s meat (see boy sense 1 c). Also attributive.
1963 B. Modisane Blame Me on Hist. (1986) 56It was the luxury we called ‘dog’s meat’, from the stories told around the locations that kitchen girls served their boy friends dishes prepared from the rations for the dogs, which were fed more nutritiously than the children of the locations.
[1980 J. Cock Maids & Madams 71Domestic workers are also called inyama yezinja, ‘dog’s meat’, by workers in other occupational roles, for it is said that employers tend to buy them inexpensive and ‘horrid’ meat, and/or because they receive insufficient food and meat.]
1985 J. Makunga in Staffrider Vol.6 No.2, 36He crept towards Tsidi’s ‘dog’s-meat’ home, so-called because when the maddie went shopping, part of the meat she bought was allotted the servant. ‘These fucking dogs live and eat better than we do.’
1988 E. Mphahlele Renewal Time 187A boy who had a girl-friend in the kitchens,..always told his friends that he was coming for dog’s meat when he meant he was visiting his girl. This was because we gave our boy-friends part of the meat the white people bought for the dogs and us.
an ironic name given to inferior meat of the cheapest cut, as bought for servants by employers.
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