pig [OE] The word pig appears in Old English only once, the usual word being swine. In the Middle Ages pig at first meant specifically ‘a young pig’, as it still does in North America. Observations such as pigs might fly [M19th] had a 16th-century parallel in pigs fly with their tails forward. In a pig in a poke, poke [ME] means ‘a small sack or bag’, now found mainly in Scottish English. The British phrase to make a pig’s ear out of, ‘to handle ineptly’, probably derives from the proverb you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, recorded from the 16th century. In the children’s game pig (or piggy) in the middle, first recorded in the Folk-Lore Journal of 1887, two people throw a ball to each other while a third tries to intercept it. This is behind the use of pig in the middle for a person who is in an awkward situation between two others. Piggyback has been around since the mid 16th century, but the origin of the expression has been lost. Early forms tend to be something like ‘pick-a-pack’ which seems to have been changed by folk etymology to the form we now have. See also hog.