Underdog

For the past two weeks I've been giving a baseball lesson to my 3rd year students and each time they've loved it. Baseball is perhaps the least appreciated of American sports in Europe, so I decided I'd give 'em a dose of that ole ball game and maybe promote it a little, you know? Anyhow, the term underdog came up as I was trying to describe the Boston Red Sox. "Can you guess what this means?" I asked. "¡Debajo perro!" some shouted. I could barely contain my urge to laugh. That is, of course, the literal translation of underdog in Spanish. After explaining that it was a metaphor someone then said, "Like Atlético de Madrid." Bingo. I couldn't have said it better myself. Now, in another class I ended up mentioning that Slum (from the slums of Mumbai) + dog (from underdog) + Millionare = Slumdog Millionaire. There was an erruption of Aaahhhhhhs.

So, I'm suddenly curious about the etymology of the word. According to Wikipedia: (very professional of me, I know) The use of the term is believed to have come from the blood-sport known as bear-baiting where    the "top-dog" was trained to attack the bear's throat and head, and the "underdog" was trained to attack the bear's underside. The top-dog had a better chance of surviving and of beating the bear, whereas the underdog was more likely to die.