A: Do you have any idea where Gardner is spending his holiday now?

    B: I’m not sure, though he posted photos of sun, beach and luxury hotel suites on WeChat.

    A: Wow, what a surprise! Gardner, who made only US$8,000 last year, has definitely not been living high on the hog.

    Note: This idiom means “affluent and luxurious.” The source of this phrase is often said to be the fact that the best cuts of meat on a pig come from the back and upper leg and that the wealthy ate cuts from “high on the hog,” while the poor ate belly pork and trotters. Others suggest that piglets who get suckled from the top row of teats of the prone mother sow tend to fare better. Why, when people had eaten pork for millennia, did the phrase not originate before the 20th century, is a difficult question to answer. Nevertheless, “high on the hog” appears to have been derived in the United States as a reference to the cuts of meat on pigs.