Why the Word “Poodle” Was Banned from Use on the Floor of the Knesset

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“I’m no poodle. I stand here today as prime minister with his head held high,” said Benjamin Netanyahu before his arraignment in a Jerusalem court on May 24 on charges of bribery and breach of public trust. Poodle owners may have been indignant, but to tell the truth, there are not many of these in Israel, where the loan word poodel is more often used for people than for dogs.

This is not, of course, just an Israeli usage. To be somebody’s “poodle” or “pet poodle” can be a derogatory expression for being someone’s plaything, lackey, or stooge in English too, as it can also be in French, in which être la caniche de quelqu’un has much the same meaning, and undoubtedly in other languages as well. Although poodles were originally bred for hunting purposes as retrievers of water fowl (“poodle” derives from the German verb pudeln, “to splash about,” which is related to English “puddle”), they were also, as far back as the 18th century, miniaturized to be lap dogs, the laps they cuddled on being invariably those of women. Standard-sized poodles, too, have often been manicured, pedicured, coiffed, and beribboned at feminine behest as pit bulls and German shepherds rarely are.