Emily

Hair of the dog is a colloquial English expression predominantly used to refer to ingestion of alcohol as treatment for a hangover. It is occasionally used with respect to dealing with the aftereffects of use of other recreational drugs. It is a shortened form of the expression “the hair of the dog that bit you.”


Hundreds of years ago, some people believed that you could be cured of rabies by eating a hair from the crazy dog that had bitten you. If the success rate for curing your hangover with a drink is the same as the success rate for curing rabies with dog hairs, I guess that would explain why it's going out of fashion as a treatment.