I decided to check my answers and found a claim of its etymology (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tak2.htm) which is amusing:
It’s usually said that the phrase derives from an older one, piss-proud, which refers to having an erection when waking up in the morning, which is usually attributed to a full bladder (proud here being an obvious pun on its senses of something raised or projecting and of something in which one may take satisfaction).
It’s first recorded, as so many such indecorous expressions are, in Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue; in the second edition of 1788 he wrote: “Piss-proud, having a false erection. That old fellow thought he had an erection, but his — was only piss-proud; said of any old fellow who marries a young wife”.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2003-10-18 10:51 am (UTC)It’s usually said that the phrase derives from an older one, piss-proud, which refers to having an erection when waking up in the morning, which is usually attributed to a full bladder (proud here being an obvious pun on its senses of something raised or projecting and of something in which one may take satisfaction).
It’s first recorded, as so many such indecorous expressions are, in Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue; in the second edition of 1788 he wrote: “Piss-proud, having a false erection. That old fellow thought he had an erection, but his — was only piss-proud; said of any old fellow who marries a young wife”.