Definition: Sticking it out through good times and bad.
Origin
Surprisingly the origin of this phrase does have an animal involved. Would it be part of our game if it didn’t? Pig Players were very inventive and blamed the expression on a number of different animals. From Alaskan mushers to hamsters — most of the animal kingdom has been accounted for in the Pig Postings. But the animal responsible was the horse. The phrase is thought to go as far back as the 15th century when Edmund Spenser (You remember him. Neither did I — I looked him up on the Internet.) wrote:
His tyreling Jade he fiersely forth did push
Through thicke and thin, both over banck and bush.
Loosely translated for those of you who don’t read Middle English, a horse named Jade galloped like crazy through thick and thin bushes. And that’s the story.
