The ultimate extent; to do something completely or thoroughly. The precise meaning and origin of this cliché have been lost. Charles Funk thought it came from a poem by William Cowper (1731–1800) that told of the Islamic prohibition against eating pork: “But for one piece they thought it hard From the whole hog to be debar’d.” A more likely source is the Irish word hog for the British shilling, American ten-cent piece, and other coins, whereby “going the whole hog” would mean spending the entire shilling or dime at one time. On the other hand, Frederick Marryat, writing in 1836 (Japhet), called it an American term. It may be derived from the American colloquialism to hog, meaning to appropriate greedily. Whichever is true, the term is a cliché on both sides of the Atlantic.