- English translation
Like the tobacconist's dog: blind in one eye, yet fancying himself a man of refined indulgences.
- Literal wording
Like the tobacco-seller's dog: one-eyed and a kayyif (a devotee of kayf, the pleasure of tobacco or narcotics).
- Meaning and lesson
The saying ridicules a person who is lowly and physically marred yet behaves like a refined sensualist with delicate moods. The image is a scruffy one-eyed dog in a tobacco shop; one possible, unconfirmed reading links its lost eye to the shop's smoke. Kayyif implies both habitual indulgence in tobacco or similar pleasures and fussy, cultivated taste.
The humor comes from the gap between the creature's sorry state and the pretensions it seems to have absorbed. Applied to people, the expression mocks unearned fastidiousness, jeering at the target's low status and appearance at once. That is its insulting logic, not a judgment this description endorses; it is a wounding jibe, not gentle teasing.
- When it is used
Use this as a derisive jab at someone of humble standing and unappealing looks who acts delicate, discerning, or temperamental, as if refined pleasures were their natural element. It belongs to sharp, informal mockery among people who share the colloquial idiom, not to polite or formal speech.
- Register
- colloquial; mocking
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
Report an issue with this meaning: Like the tobacconist's dog: blind in one eye, yet fancying himself a man of refined indulgences.