It might have had a good reputation, but it wasn't really what you were expecting, so you could be accused of buying a pig in a poke.

A poke was a bag, and a pocket was a little bag. Hence the reason many Americans call a handbag a pocket book.

The phrase goes back to at least 1386. It originated when a buyer would think he was buying a pig but the seller would put a cat, or a puppy in the bag, telling the buyer not to open the bag until he got home because the pig might run away.

The word pig goes back to at least 1225, but it was then spelt as pigge or as pygge, or as any number of other spellings.

Chaucer in Reeve's Tale said: "They walwe as doone two pigges in a poke". He also wrote "piggesnye", as a term of endearment for one's sweetheart, literally - a darling little pig's eye.

Shakespeare had several goes at pigs. In a Comedy of Errors he said: "The pigge, quoth I, is burn'd". In A Merchant of Venice he said: "Some men there are love, not a gaping pigge".

In 1927 under Dialect Notes there appears: "Pig, a woman - sottish, surly, who has sunk to the lowest level of prostitution. The bum who keeps a pig rents her out to others".

In addition to a pig in a poke you could have a pig's ear, or pigs might fly, or be pig-headed.

More at lauriebarber.com; lbword@midcoast.com.au.