#673 Yap Dog

So the other day I was in a store and I saw this bag of candy I just had to buy.
This candy has been around for a long time, and in fact was once the most lauded remedy for cough, phlegm, and an ancient ailment known as catarrh.
In other words, it was used as an expectorant. A mucus breaker upper.
But I found that out later. Having been raised in the era of Smith Brothers cough drops I’d never heard the name of this candy. And lucky thing too, congenital sophomoric glee at odd names would have drawn me to it for sure.
Because the candy was flavored with an herb called “horehound.”
It’s interesting to me that a language that taboos certain words, or at least is squeamish about them, will, by the simple expedient of tacking on a less obnoxious word, bring the original word into everyday and perfectly acceptable use.
The hound in horehound is such an example.
Some would argue that the hore in horehound, since it’s spelled with just an H and not the apparently harsher W-H- is not the same type we see offering their wares in the evening.
Amazing what damage a simple W can do.
I would argue that the word still sounds like the purveyor in question and that adding hound to the word invokes the vision of an interesting animal indeed.
One would most naturally think that a horehound was an odd form of dog to keep around.
Who originally bred them? And why? Is it a big dog?
Or a lapdog?
I understand certain terriers were originally bred to ferret out rats and protect grain and such. Was there a similar purpose envisioned for the horehound?
No indeed, they were not some bounty hunter’s trusted side kick, pointed like a drug dog, an illegal beagle trained to sniff out perpetrators of prostitution in some big bordello border raid.
No, the etymology dictionary says the hore is horehound is derived from the word hoary, h-o-a-r-y, meaning old, white and hairy.
Yeah right. So what kind of twisted individual wants a dog trained to hunt hair?
America, ya gotta love it