Etymology
1. c.1175 (implied in
hogaster), "swine reared for slaughter" (usually about a year old), also used by stockmen for "young sheep" (c.1350) and for "horse older than one year," suggesting the original sense had something to do with an age, not a type of animal. Not evidenced in O.E., but it may have existed. Possibility of Celtic origin is regarded by O.E.D. as "improbable." Fig. sense of "gluttonous person" is first recorded 1436. Meaning "Harley-Davidson motorcycle" is attested from 1967. The verb meaning "to appropriate greedily" is U.S. slang from 1884 (first attested in "Huck Finn"). The verb
hog-tie "bind hands and feet" is first recorded 1894.
Hog in armor "awkward or clumsy person in ill-fitting attire" is from 1660. Phrase
to go the whole hog (1828) is sometimes said to be from the butcher shop option of buying the whole slaughtered animal (at a discount) rather than just the choice bits. But it is perhaps rather from the story (recorded in Eng. from 1779) of Muslim sophists, forbidden by the Quran from eating a certain unnamed part of the hog, who debated which part was intended and managed to exempt the whole of it from the prohibition.
2. From Middle English hog, from Old English hogg, hocg (“hog”), possibly from Old Norse hǫggva (“to strike, chop, cut”), from Proto-Germanic *hawwaną (“to hew, forge”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂- (“to beat, hew, forge”).
3. Cognate with Old High German houwan, Old Saxon hauwan, Old English hēawan (English hew). Hog originally meant a castrated male pig, hence a sense of “the cut one”. (Compare hogget for a castrated male sheep.) More at hew.
4. Alternatively from a Brythonic language, from Proto-Celtic *sukkos, from Proto-Indo-European *suH- and thus cognate with Welsh hwch (“sow”) and Cornish hogh (“pig”). See: Proto-Germanic '
*hawwaną', Old High German 'houwan', Old Saxon '
hauwan', Cornish '
hogh'.