Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Have you ever been so annoyed that you could say with relative confidence that someone "got your goat?"

We've been using the idiom "get my goat" to express annoyance or irritation for at least a century, and probably longer. What's the story behind this inscrutable phrase?

Unfortunately, verbivores, the origin of "get my goat" is fugitive. Although one of the first literary citations of the expression appeared in a 1912 Jack London novel called Smoke Bellew, the source of the cliche remains elusive.

The American editor and critic H.L. Mencken offered a somewhat fanciful theory in 1945, speculating that the expression derived from the horse racing industry.

Goats, said Mencken, were often stabled beside high-strung thoroughbreds to calm them between races. A goat stolen (or "gotten") from a paddock by the owners of a rival racehorse would be missed by its equine stablemate. The scheme was to upset the horse enough to cause him to falter in the next race.

Radio Script > Get one's Goat