Pop quiz! Only one of the following words appears in two breed standards. Which one? 1) Sextant; 2) Quadrant; 3) Compass; 4) Needle.

The answer is compass — but not the navigational instrument. Its usage in dog breed standards makes more sense when you know that the expression, “in a small compass,” is an old English idiom meaning “within a small space” or “within limited bounds.” The root goes back to the 14th‑century Middle English noun compass, meaning “space, area, or boundary,” derived from Old French compas (“circle, extent”) and Latin compassare, “to measure or pace out.” By the mid‑1500s, compass had come to signify the limits or range of something, so the phrase “in a small compass” literally meant “compressed within narrow bounds.”

The first time the phrase appeared in the dog fancy was in December 1876 when the newly formed Fox Terrier Club in London (championed by sportsmen and fanciers like J. H. Murchison and Rawdon B. Lee) —published its inaugural breed standard in The Field newspaper. It described the ideal Fox Terrier as having “bone and strength in a small compass,” a tidy way of saying that a Fox Terrier should be sturdy, powerful, and athletic without being coarse or heavy.

The turn of phrase became a cornerstone of the breed’s description with virtually identical wording adopted by the UK’s Kennel Club in 1879 and later by the AKC in 1885 (the phrase remains in the current AKC breed standards for the Smooth Fox Terrier and the Wire Fox Terrier). Historical accounts, including Rawdon Lee’s own Modern Dogs from 1880 regard this as the phrase’s formal premiere in a terrier standard, replacing earlier and vaguer descriptors like “compact” or “hardy” found in sporting texts such as Daniel’s Rural Sports from 1852.

It’s possible that like so much of the vernacular found in the dog fancy, the phrase was borrowed from 19th-century British equestrian and hunting jargon in which it was used to praise the efficient, ground-covering builds of compact hunters; Because the expression perfectly captured the Fox Terrier’s essence as a scaled-down, efficient mover — power and endurance packed neatly into a small, workmanlike frame — “in a small compass” has endured.

Image: Arthur Wardle’s painting, “The Totteridge XI” (1897) depicts eleven Smooth Fox Terriers from Francis Redmond’s renowned Totteridge kennel. It is in the public domain.