‘So, we travel this route – (up the) duff -> dough -> pudding -> penis -> pregnant’

Mrs Miggins cookery book says…..”Replace ‘pregnant’ with ‘make hole in doughnuts’

‘To duff something, or duff it over,’ normally means to give it a new air, a new appearance, or otherwise manipulate it to make it seem better (or at least different) than it might otherwise seem.

Yes, ‘doing someone over’ might well lead to a new or at least different appearance….

Don’t get me started on all this! I ended up looking up phrases like ‘batsh1t bonkers’ – (Another one often applied to me, like the failed elocution lessons, and I can’t think why!) – and what about “now’s the time to chase that squirrel?!”

However, ref the latter, it is actually a square dance from American folklore, one of ‘them there’ catch-the-girl-and-kiss-her games, like ‘Oats and Beans and Barley Grow.’ It may even go back to a morris dance, and is aka ‘The Maid That Dare Not Tell.’ Not sure what she dare not tell (save, perhaps, NOT kiss and tell) but, being a maid, we can be sure she’s not ‘up the duff!’

The song itself can be found with music in ‘Waltz The Hall: The American Play Party’ by Alan L. Spurgeon, but this is a better, more informative link with the words:

http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/chase-the-squirrel.aspx?skin=printerfriendly

It really is an old song!

I can see I shall have to moderate my descriptions. (The lack of value in any elocution lessons I might have been given in life has been commented on many times!) But, in my defence, I would just like to add the following edification from Phrasefinder:

Up the duff, meaning of – euphemism for pregnant. Used most commonly, although not exclusively, to describe unplanned pregnancy.

Origin: The phrase doesn’t appear in print until 1941, in Sydney John Baker’s Dictionary of Australian Slang:

“Duff, up the (of a woman), pregnant.”

‘Duff ‘isn’t a common word and seems an odd choice for a colloquial phrase. (However, I found missen thinking of plum duff!) It took a rather roundabout route…

As the phrase means pregnant, it shouldn’t come as a major surprise that for the origin we need look no further than the penis. (No indeedy! As if I would ever look anywhere else! Hahahahahahaha!) As with many English phrases that refer to sexual activity, we dive straight into a world of euphemism and there are several obscuring layers here between penis and pregnancy.

One of the numerous slang terms for the sexual organs, or more commonly specifically the penis, is pudding. This has a long history, going back to at least the 18th century, as here from Thomas D’Urfey’s, ‘Wit and mirth: or pills to purge melancholy,’ being a collection of ballads and songs, 1719:

“I made a request to prepare again, That I might continue in Love with the strain Of his Pudding”.

A slang term for male masturbation, which leaves little to the imagination – ‘pull one’s pudding’, has been known since at least the 19th century.

There is a related phrase for pregnancy – ‘in the pudding club’, and it turns out that this and ‘up the duff’ are essentially the same phrase. By 1890, Barrère & Leland, in their Dictionary of Slang, defined the term pudding club:

“A woman in the family way is said to be in the pudding club.”

Note that in those Victorian times the definition of a euphemistic term for pregnancy relied on another euphemism.

‘Dough’ is another word for pudding and duff is an alternative form and pronunciation of dough. That was in use by 1840, as here from R. H. Dana in ‘Before the Mast:’

“To enhance the value of the Sabbath to the crew, they are allowed on that day a pudding, or, as it is called, a ‘duff’.”

So, we travel this route – (up the) duff -> dough -> pudding -> penis -> pregnant.

The more recent ‘bun in the oven’, another slang phrase for pregnant, may originate this way too.

But now how does that relate to the expression ‘duffing over,’ or ‘duffing someone up’ as in giving them a good drubbing or beating? The mind positively boggles! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!