Heaven; a place of abundance, replete with what one wants. The idea comes from the beliefs of Native American tribes that after death they will go to a paradise with an abundance of game and therefore always have enough to eat. The term appears in the works of James Fenimore Cooper and other writers on Indian subjects. As Cooper wrote in The Pathfinder (1840), “‘Do the dead of the savages ever walk?’ demanded Cap. ‘Ay, and run, too, in their happy hunting grounds.’” Later the term became a euphemism for death, and still later it was transferred to any place of abundant treasures.

To stay in favor with two opponents; to take both sides at the same time. This expression, with its analogy to being both hunted and hunter, dates from the fifteenth century and appeared in Heywood’s 1546 proverb collection. John Lyly used it in Euphues (1580): “Whatsoeuer I speake to men, the same also I speake to women, I meane not to run with the Hare and holde with the Hounde.” The meaning is quite different from a similar-sounding cliché, to run with the pack, which means to take the same side as the majority. However, both these terms may be dying out in America.

This idea or excuse won’t work. This folksy expression originated in the American South, where dogs are commonly used to hunt raccoons and other wild animals. Also put as that old dog won’t hunt, it originated in the late 1800s.