It was hot. 

Some of the wheat crop had been brought in and if you looked closely you could almost see the hot wind ­bearing down across the plains.

Even the three dogs guarding the house were content to find a shady spot where they could watch the world go by. They looked harassed, if we can use one dictionary definition of the term “to wear out, exhaust”.

I watched the dogs lying under a tree in Dubbo and I thought of a question a friend had asked earlier in the year.

It was something like: “Why do we say we will sool the dogs onto you?” I didn’t think to ask why he had raised this question. Had he been doing ­something he shouldn’t? No doubt, I will find out eventually. I’ll have to ask his wife.

Sool wasn’t the word used originally in our English language. 

In the early days people were more inclined to use the word sowl.

This was not the Society of Women Lawyers, a group that exists in some countries and perhaps does little more than illustrate the dangers of using acronyms.

In days gone by the English language had a word sowl that meant something like “pull roughly by the ears”. 

OK, you can remember the days when you were young and your mother tugged your ears for some misdemeanour, but you probably deserved it.

The first use I could find of the word sowl came in Bill Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, performed in 1607. 

After a servant’s comment about having a bloke “beaten like a dog” is another comment by the servant saying “sowl the porter of Rome gates by the ears”. 

Some books say “sowl” and others say “sole”, but they all mean the same thing.

My big dictionary says the meaning was “to pull, seize, roughly by the ears, in later use especially of dogs seizing pigs by the ears”.

For some reason that I can’t explain, the word changed its spelling to sool and was adopted largely in Australian English.

Alexander Harris wrote in The Emigrant Family in 1849 “sowl her boys” but from then on the word changed to sool. 

Joseph Furphy used the word sool in 1903 and Louis Stone ­commented in 1911 “sooling the women on as if they were dogs”.

OK so far, but where does harass come in?

Well, in days gone by harass meant something similar to sowl.

The French allegedly had a word harer, with a few different spellings, that meant something like setting a dog on. 

It also meant to exhaust, or make weary, as in a 1626 comment that the troops were harassed by a long and weary march or a 1710 comment that the war “cruelly harassed this land”.

Samuel Johnson in his 1746 ­dictionary and with his spelling described to hare as “to hurry with terrour”.

The American Merriam-Webster book says the French harer meant “to set the dogs on”. 

The cry was used to encourage ­hunting dogs during the chase.

No doubt, when the fox was found someone would say something like “hallo, what have we here?” 

Hallo, or hello, is said to have had similar origins.

I found an 1884 comment that said “there must be no halloing until we are out of this wood”. 

I don’t know what it meant, but it was probably a comment from a hunter who caught the fox but then realised he was lost.

lbword@midcoast.com.au