‘pig’s breakfast’: meaning and origin

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With allusion to the jumbled nature of a pig’s meal, the colloquial phrase pig’s breakfast designates a mess, a muddle; something unattractive or unappetising.
—Synonyms: dog’s breakfastdog’s dinner.

The phrase pig’s breakfast occurs, for example, in an account of the debate on the British Government’s Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill that took place in the House of Commons on Saturday 12th April 2025—according to Hansard, the Conservative M.P. Alex Burghart, Acting Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, declared the following:

I am sure we are going to hear a lot today about urgency, moving at pace and the rest of it, but the truth is that the Government have made a total pig’s breakfast of this whole arrangement.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase pig’s breakfast that I have found:

1-: From The Waimate Daily Advertiser (Waimate, Canterbury, New Zealand) of Monday 26th November 1917 [page 2, column 5]—a wheen of means a few:

Mr A. Watson, M.A., of Weston, preached to large congregations at Knox Church yesterday. In the morning he spoke to the children of the Worshipping League on the oldest profession in the world—that of the architect. Some had considered that gardening was the oldest profession, because in Genesis it was stated that God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it; but an Edinburgh divine, discussing this matter with his young charges, had inclined rather to the opinion that the profession of the builder must have come earlier into practice. He (Rev. Mr Watson), however, agreed with neither. It was necessary, before making a garden, to have a plan. A good lady of his acquaintance near Dunedin had a rich lump of ground in which she had planted all kinds of choice flowers, etc. One season she decided to get a professional gardener in to do the place up. After he had been at the work some time she went out to him and asked what he thought of her garden. The man looked at her a wee while, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Well, Ma’m, it’s verra like a pig’s breakfast. There’s a wheen o’ fine things, in it, but it’s an awfu’ mixture.” So, it was necessary in the garden of our lives to have a plan, and we should make Christ Jesus the Architect of our lives.

2-: From Hurricane in West Indies. News From Motherwell Family, published in The Motherwell Times and General Advertiser (Motherwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland) of Friday 19th November 1926 [page 2, column 5]:

“We were lucky, as some people have had a most terrifying experience, and lost their all—house furniture, bedding and dishes all mixed up like a pig’s breakfast.”

3-: From The Citizen To Be. The Dewdrop’s Crew. The Secret of Useless’ Job, a short story by ‘Mareen’, published in The Queenslander Illustrated Weekly (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) of Thursday 18th August 1927 [page 14, column 2]:

Useless was too worked up to bother hitting Freddie Till. In fact he was so upset he let everything out in one sweep.
“Strike me pink,” he said, “the boss gave me that to post two or three days ago. It’s to arrange a meet with her this very afternoon, too, and I’m losing commission if she doesn’t turn up.”
I might say that sounded as clear as a pig’s breakfast to me, but glancing at Freddie Till I could see he had some sort of a brainwave, so I kept quiet.

4-: From the column Speakin’ o’ Sports, published in the North Penn Reporter (Lansdale, Pennsylvania, USA) of Thursday 13th February 1930 [page 3, column 1]:

The sickest bunch of basketball players that ever left a locker room looking like a pig’s breakfast, viewed the cold showers in the Jefferson school, at Allenton, last week in mild despair, and looked at each other in wild disgust.

5-: From A Sheep-Station Glossary, by the New-Zealand explorer, soldier, author and sheep farmer Leopold George Dyke Acland (1876-1948), published in The Press (Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand) of Saturday 9th September 1933 [page 15, column 7]:

As . . as a . . .—Idiomatic use of as to introduce a simile. Everyone uses these expressions. Among the best known are “As old as the hills,” “as grey as a badger,” “as like as two peas,” “as bright as a new pin.” Someone who is interested in colloquial English should make a collection of them.
Two may possibly be Canterbury expressions: At least, I never heard them outside the province:
(1) As rough as a bag.
(2) As rough as a pig’s breakfast.

6-: From Comrades of the Great Adventure (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Limited, 1935), by the Australian soldier and author Harold Roy Williams (1889-1955)—as quoted in a review of this book, published in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 30th March 1935 [page 17, column 4]—the noun tucker means food:

“Well, what did you imagine the life of a soldier in France to be like? There are no feather beds here, and the tucker is generally as rough as a pig’s breakfast—that’s when you get any. But, as most of us will die in the mud like bogged mules, for heaven’s sake let’s not growl about anything so long as we’re alive.”

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