| A
barking dog never bites |
|
Describes
people who sound more dangerous than they really are. |
| A
bit of a dog |
|
Derogatory
term in referring to a woman. |
| A dog |
1. |
Something that is
generally not fit for purpose, usually through deterioration. |
|
2. |
A particularly
unattractive female. |
| A
face that would scare a dog out of a butcher shop |
1. |
Not pretty. (Australia) |
|
2. |
Very ugly. (Australia) |
| A
dog is (a) man's best friend |
|
An
expression of unconditional love and loyalty, irrespective of the
situation. |
| A
tough dog to keep up on the porch |
|
A
person who is difficult to restrain. (North America) |
| Ain't nothing
but a hound dog |
|
Familiar
to most of us (who remember it) as a hit for Elvis Presley in the 1960s, 'You
Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog' is one of the most popular Blues songs
ever written. It was first recorded in 1953 by Blues singer Willie Mae 'Big
Mama' Thornton. Back then it was not uncommon for songs recorded by
African American performers in the 30s, 40s, and 50s to be reissued by
white artists - making them more acceptable to white audiences. Even a
Blues song like 'Hound Dog', written by Mike Lieber and Jerry
Stoller, with a lyric obviously from the perspective of a woman
complaining about her no good, lying, cheating, shiftless man could be
readdressed and made more popular by a white, male performer. Sad.
(North America) |
| All
dogged-up |
|
In one's
smartest clothes. |
| A (mere)
dog in a doublet |
|
A
pitiful creature. But also see 'As proud as a dog in a doublet'! |
| An old dog at
it |
|
An expert at
something, often a craft. |
| Argue like cat
and dog |
|
Disagree
forcefully and unrentingly. |
| As fat as a
butcher's dog |
|
Very fat. A
butcher's dog would be expected to be very well - too well - fed from
scraps. But also see 'As fit as a butcher's dog'! |
| As fit as a
butcher's dog |
|
Very fit. But also
see 'As fat as a butcher's dog'! |
| As proud as a
dog with a tin tail |
|
Very proud. (Australia) |
| A sad dog |
|
Derogatory term in
referring to a woman. |
| As proud as
a dog in a doublet |
|
Exceedingly
proud. But also see 'A (mere) dog in a doublet'! |
| As
quick as a dog can lick a dish |
|
To
perform an action or thought very speedily. |
| As sick as a
dog |
|
Help
please! |
| bar-dog |
|
Bartender.
(North America) |
| Barking
dogs seldom bite |
|
If
someone's busy doing something unpleasant, they probably haven't got time
to do something even more unpleasant. |
| Better
be the head of a dog then the tail of a lion |
|
Better
to be strong in your own attitudes - however weak those attitudes may be -
than timidly follow other people's attitudes - however strong those
attitudes may be. |
| Big
dog |
|
Important
person. |
| Bird
dog |
|
Someone's
buttocks (remember that song - 'She's a bird dog'?) (North
America) |
| (The) black
dog |
|
Colloquial
term for medical depression. Thought to have been originated by Winston
Churchill, Britain's great wartime leader, who himself suffered from
depression or 'visits from the black dog'. |
| Bull dogs |
|
A pair of pistols. |
| (It's)
blowing dogs off chains |
|
A term
used by sailors to describe a very stiff breeze. Believed to have
originated in the Australian sailing community, now universal. |
| Call
me a dog, get called a bitch |
|
A
comment made about one's own comment in an escalating tit-for-tat exchange
which has taken place. |
| Call
off the dogs |
|
Cease
some objectionable line of conduct. The analogy is that of the chase, in
which dogs following a wrong sent are called off. |
| Crooked as a
dog's hind leg |
|
Very crooked. |
| Cry havoc and
let slip the dogs of war |
|
Military: The
order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in
the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (as Shakespeare would describe them
'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos. |
| Cut
dog has no pups |
|
Before
the playing cards are dealt, declining to cut the pack. (North America) |
| Dog |
1. |
To
relentlessly follow, or shadow, someone. |
|
|
|
|
3. |
To post a student
for an examination on the last available day. |
|
4. |
A
poorly-performing stock market share. |
| Dog
along |
|
To
fare tolerably, passably. |
| Dog
and bone |
|
Cockney
(Londoner) rhyming slang for a telephone, an instrument of communication
in wide use before email was invented. |
| Dog and
Bonnet |
|
Military:
The lion-and-crown badge of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. |
| Dog
and Duck |
|
A
public-house sign, to announce that ducks were hunted by dogs within. The
sport was to see the duck dive, and send the dog after it. |
| Dog and maggot |
|
Military:
An army term for biscuits and cheese. |
| Dog
and pony show |
|
Put on
a good performance; to impress someone. eg, "I've got to do the
'dog and pony show' for my boss today". |
| Dog-basket |
|
Nautical:
The receptical in which the remains of the cabin meals (for the
officers) were smuggled forward (to the crew) in sailing ships. |
| Dog-biscuit |
1. |
Military:
An army matress, determined by shape and colour. |
|
2. |
Military:
The staple biscuit issued to troops on active service in World War I
(1914-18). Unsalted, unflavoured, and very, very hard! Mmmmm, sounds
scrummy! |
| Dog bite my
ear! |
|
A lower class
expression of astonishment. |
| Dog biting dog |
|
Applied
originally to one
actor's adversely criticising another's performance, now more generally
used within any profession. |
| Dog-bolt |
|
A colloquial term
of contempt. |
| Dog booby |
|
Military:
An awkward lout; a clodhopper. |
| Dog-box |
|
A passenger
carriage on rural railways without a corridor, each compartment having its
own door to the platform. And sometimes its own toilet (think about it!).
(Particularly Australia) |
| Dog
breath |
|
Particularly
unpleasant way of referring to, or addressing, someone. |
| Dog-buffer |
|
A dog
stealer that kills all dogs for whom the owners don't advertise, selling the
skins and feeding the other stolen dogs with the carcasses. 18th and 19th
centuries (relief!) |
| Dog-cart |
|
A police car. (Australia) |
| Dog-catchers |
|
A
train crew sent to relieve a crew that has become 'outlawed' - ie, worked the
maximum permitted hours of 16 in one shift. (Canada) |
| Dog-cheap |
|
Exceedingly
cheap whilst offering good value. A perversion of the old English 'god-chepe'
(a good bargain). As in "buy1or2.com's dog life jackets are
dog-cheap". |
| Dog-clutch |
|
A
disconnectable coupling. |
| Dog-collar |
|
A
'stand-up' stiff collar, especially a clergyman's reversed collar. |
| Dog-dancing |
|
Useless
and exaggerated activity, such as a dog engages in capering with glee on
the return of his master (or mistress). |
| Dog day
afternoon |
|
The
hottest part of the hottest day. Popularised when used as the title of the classic 1975 bank hostage film
starring Al Pacino. |
| Dog-days (of
summer) |
1. |
The
best of days. More literally, days
of great heat. The Romans called the six or eight hottest weeks of the
summer 'caniculares dies' ('Days of the dog'). According to their theory, the dog-star
(Sirius), rising with the sun, added to its heat, and the dog-days bore
the combined heat of the dog-star and the sun (3 July - 11 August). Siriusly! |
|
2. |
The
slowest period (summer) of the year in the USA stock market. |
| Dog-drawn |
|
A low
colloquialism, said of a woman from whom a man has, in the act of sexual
connection, been forcibly removed. |
| Dog
driver |
|
Policeman,
used in an insulting or contemptuous context. (West Indies) |
| Dog-eared |
|
The
corners of leaves of paper, crumpled and folded down. |
| Dog eat dog |
|
Expresses the way
equal, unrestricted, competition can have drastic results! It
would appear that the phrase originated as 'dog doesn't eat dog',
which can be traced back to an original Latin quotation, meaning that even
a (supposedly) lowly creature like the dog has limits, if not principles,
and will not destroy its own kind. History tends to indicate that
humans are not so principled as dogs: by the 16th century, people were
imagining a world in which metaphorical dogs did devour each other, and 'dog
eat dog' had come to mean 'ruthlessly competitive'. Not surprisingly,
by the time of the Industrial Revolution, phrases such as 'It's a dog
eat dog world' had become commonplace. |
| Dog-end |
|
A
cigarette end, sometimes known as a cigarette 'butt'. It is probably a corruption of 'docked end' - a
cigarette that is kept for another smoke having first been quenched or
docked. (A 'cigarette' was a thin tube of tobacco, wrapped in
paper. People used to light one end, place the other end in their mouth,
and draw the burning tobacco into their lungs. Strange but true!) |
| Dog-faced
liar |
|
Said
of a person who has told a blatant untruth or who repeatedly tells
untruths. |
| Dog
fall |
|
An
unfair fall in wrestling, where both wrestlers fall together. |
| Dog-fancier |
|
A
receiver of stolen dogs and restorer of the same to their owners - for a
fee. |
| Dog-fat |
|
Military:
Butter. |
| Dog-fight |
|
Military:
An RAF colloquialism, perhaps best defined, implicatively, by P.C.
Wren in 'The Passing Show', 18 August 1934: "But the best
sport of all was a dog-fight, an all-on-to-all scrap between a flight of
British Bristol Scouts and a bigger flight of Fokkers, everybody
shooting-up everybody, a wild and whirling melee from which every now and
then someone went hurtling down to death in a blaze of smoke and fire".
Later, the term has come to be used for one-to-one flying engagement. |
| Dog-flight
buttons |
|
Military:
The buttons worn by those on the Army's General Service list. |
Dogged
(pronounced as one syllable) |
|
To be followed-about by someone
(physically) or something (mentally).
|
Dogged
(pronounced as two syllables) |
1. |
Unrelenting; persistent.
|
| 2. |
Sullen, snappish, like a dog (some of them,
anyway!). |
| 3. |
Perhaps the origin of 'dog-gone'.
|
| Dogger |
1. |
One who practices dogging, the
collecting, cleaning and selling of dog-end tobacco. |
|
2. |
To
cheat; sell rubbish. |
|
3. |
A
professional hunter of dingoes. (Australia) |
| Doggers |
|
Multi-coloured
swim shorts. (Particularly Australia) |
| Doggess |
|
Supposedly jocular way of calling a woman a
bitch.
|
| Doggie |
|
A
colloquial pet name for a dog. |
| Doggie
Day |
|
New
Year's Day. (ie, when dog licences were required, the day in the UK when such licences were renewable.) |
| Doggin |
|
See 'dog-end'. |
| Dogging |
|
Watching
acts of sexual connection, particularly in public places, with the willing
agreement of the participants. |
| Dog-gone |
|
Colloquial
euphemism for, and fantastic perversion of, 'God-damned'. (Particularly
USA) |
| Doggo
party |
|
An
unattractive female. |
| Dog-grass |
|
Grass
eaten by dogs when they have lost their appetite; it acts as an emetic and
purgative. |
| Doggy |
1. |
Stylish,
smart, whether of appearance or of actions. |
|
2. |
See 'Doggie'. |
| Doggy
Day |
|
See 'Doggie
Day'. |
| Doggy
fashion |
|
To
have sexual connection on all fours, combining as dogs would mate. |
| Dog-head |
|
In
machinery, that which bites or holds the gun-flint. |
| Dog-headed
Tribes of India |
|
Mentioned
in the Italian romance of Guerino Meschino. |
| Dog-house |
|
Railroadmen's
'caboose' - a sleeping and eating carriage exclusively for their use. (Canada) |
| Dog
in a blanket |
|
Nautical
(mostly): A roly-poly pudding. |
| Dog
in a doublet |
|
A
daring, resolute fellow, reflecting the way German hunting dogs would be
protected in a boar chase with a leather doublet. |
| Dog
it |
|
To be
lazy; to avoid work. (USA / Canada) |
| Dog
it up |
|
To
behave or dress in an ostentatious or showy manner. (USA / Canada) |
| Dog-Latin |
|
Bad,
sham or pretended Latin. |
| Dog-leech |
|
A
quack. Formerly applied to a medical practitioner, it expresses great
contempt. |
| Dog-leg |
1. |
Military:
A good conduct chevron. See also 'Dog's leg'. |
|
2. |
To
make an angled detour, perhaps around a forbidden zone. |
| Dog-leg
left |
|
Sharp turn
to the left, particularly on a golf course fairway, or perhaps on a road
or pathway.. |
| Dog-leg
right |
|
See 'dog-leg
left' (but to the right!). |
| Dog
Licence |
|
A
Certificate of Exemption to allow an Aboriginal to buy a drink in an
hotel. (Australia) |
| Dog
meat |
|
Food
unfit for consumption by human beings. |
| Dog
my cats! |
|
Expression
of surprise at the confidence with which another person, whose knowledge
of the topic you have cause to doubt, offers their opinion.
("My goodness; what
do you know?") |
| Dog-nap |
|
A
short sleep enjoyed in a sitting position. |
| Dog-napping |
|
The
practice of stealing pets. |
| Dog
nobbler |
|
A
gaudy (any colour but often orange) chenille and marabou attractor lure
used in fly fishing. |
| Dog
on it! |
|
See 'dog-gone'. |
| Dog
out |
|
To
keep watch for accomplices up to no good. |
| Dog-robber |
|
Military:
A servant or aide of a high officer, who will do anything (even rob
dogs!) to supply his master with food and liquor suitable to his rank. I
can think of another word for him! |
| Dog-rose |
|
Botanical
name, so called because it is supposed to cure the bite of a mad dog. |
| Dog-rough |
|
Very
unpleasant; hard. |
| Dogs |
1. |
Military:
The 17th Lancers or Duke of Cambridge's Own Lancers (UK). The crest of
this famously cavalry regiment is a Death's head and cross-bones over OR
GLORY, whence the acronistic Death Or Glory (D.O.G.). |
|
2. |
In
stock exchange phraseology, means Newfoundland Telegraph shares (as
in Newfoundland dogs). |
|
3. |
Metal
legs supporting an open fire basket. |
| Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on |
|
A situation where many minor characters may be vocal and loud, but the main idea or project will continue to progress. (Saudi Arabia) |
| Dog's
bird leg |
|
A
lance corporal's single stripe. |
| Dog's
body |
|
In
working environments, the junior upon whom the wearisome errands and
unwelcome jobs are devolved. |
| Dog's
bollocks |
|
The
typographical combination of a colon and a dash (use your
imagination!). |
| Dog's
bottom |
|
A
facetious term of address. 'Is he the dog's bottom?' (Is he any
good?) (Australia) |
| Dog's
breakfast |
|
A
mess; confusion; turmoil. Dogs are known to eat vomit.
Further, dog food prepared by humans tends to be a random mix of different
things together and actually often looks somewhat like vomit. The phrase
is a reference to the appearance of what dogs eat. |
| Dog's
cock |
|
An
unwieldy back splice. |
| Dog's
diddy |
|
See 'Dog's
cock'. |
| Dog's
dinner |
|
See 'Dog's
breakfast'. |
| Dog's
disease |
|
Influenza.
(Australia) |
| Dogs'-ears |
|
See 'Dog-eared'. |
| Dog's
face |
|
Colloquial
term of abuse. |
| Dogs have masters, cats have staff |
|
Dogs are typically obedient to humans, but cats have humans serving them. (USA) |
| Dog's
lady |
|
See 'Doggess'. |
| Dog's
legs |
|
Military:
The chevrons worn on the arm designating non-commissioned rank, not
unlike in outline the canine hind leg. See also 'dog leg'. |
| Dog's
licence |
|
References
to the monetary amount of 7/6d (in old UK money - about 37.5p in new money
- can't think there's much use for the term now!). |
| Dogs'
meat |
1. |
See
'Dog meat'. |
|
2. |
Anything
worthless. |
| Dog's-nose |
|
A mix
of gin and beer. |
| Dog's
paste |
|
Sausage-
or mince-meat. |
| Dog's
portion |
|
Almost
nothing; a lick and a smell. |
| Dog's
prick |
|
Typographically,
an exclamation mark. |
| Dog's
rig |
|
Sexual
connection to exhaustion, followed by back-to-back indifference. |
| Dog-shelf |
|
The
floor, as sarcastically said to a child dropping something: "That's
right, hang it up on the dog-shelf!". |
| Dog-shooter |
|
Military:
A volunteer in the Army. |
| Dog-sick |
|
Sick
as a dog. Very sick. |
| Dog-sleep |
|
A
pretended sleep, based on the fallacy that dogs seem to sleep with one eye
open. |
| Dog's
soup |
|
Water. |
| Dog-star |
|
The
brightest star in the firmament (Sirius). |
| Dog-stealer |
|
A
dog-dealer. |
| Dog-stiffener |
|
A
professional dingo-killer. (Australia) |
| Dog-stiffeners |
|
Leather
leggings. |
| Dog-tag |
|
Military:
A metal or other indestructible identity disc. |
| Dog's
Tail |
|
The
constellation of the Little Bear. |
| Dogs
that bite |
|
Sore
feet. |
| Dog's
vomit |
|
Meat
and biscuits cooked together as a moist hash. |
| Dog's
wife |
|
See 'Doggess'. |
| Dog-throw |
|
The
lowest throw at dice. |
| Dog-trick |
|
A mean
or 'dirty' action or trick. |
| Dog-vane |
|
A
cockade (a feather or ribbon worn on military headwear). |
| Dog-walloper |
|
A
stick or cudgel. A policeman's baton. (Australia) |
| Dog-walloping |
|
Picking
up the ends of cigars and cigarettes. |
| Dog-watch |
|
A
corruption of dodge-watch; two short watches, one from four to six in the
morning, the other from six to eight in the evening, introduced to 'dodge'
(break) the routine, or prevent the same men always keeping watch at the
same time. |
| Dogways |
|
Sexual
connection like a dog. |
| Dog-whipper |
1. |
A
beadle (a minor parish officer) who whips all dogs from the precinct of a
church. At one time there was a church office so called. As recently as
1851 Mr John Pickard was appointed "dog-whipper" in Exeter
Cathedral (England). |
|
2. |
The
person who superintends the work of pony drivers and leaders in metal
mines. |
| Dog-whipping
Day |
|
18
October (St Luke's Day). It is said that a dog once swallowed the
consecrated wafer in York Minster Cathedral (England) on that day. (Didn't
go down very well.) |
| Dog-whistle
politics |
|
Expressing
political ideas in such a way that only a specific group of voters
properly understand what is being said, especially in order to conceal a
controversial message. |
| Dolled
up like a dog's dinner |
|
Stylishly
dressed, verging on being over-dressed. |
| Done
up like a dog's dinner |
|
See 'Dolled
up like a dog's dinner'. |
| Don't keep a
dog and bark yourself |
|
Don't pay someone
to do a task and then do it yourself. |
| Eat your own dog food |
|
Use the products or services that you or your company produces. (USA) |
| Enough
to make a dog laugh |
|
Extremely
funny. |
| Even
a dog can distinguish between being stumbled over and being kicked |
|
Anyone
who is the victim of an unwelcome incident can identify whether the
incident was deliberately or accidentally caused. |
| Every dog has
its day (in the sun) and/or (and a bitch two afternoons) |
|
Even
the lowliest of beings will have a moment of glory. In relation to the
bitch - Help please! |
| Give
a dog a bad name (and hang him) |
|
An
unfavourable or disparaging adjective about someone (or something) is come
across (or invented) which is immediately accepted without corroboration
as being true, often with dire results. |
| Give
(someone) the dog to hold |
|
To
serve a person a mean trick. |
| Going
to the dogs |
|
Someone who is
deteriorating in appearance, character or behaviour. |
| Gone to the dogs |
|
Someone who has
deteriorated in appearance, character or behaviour. This is
an analogy to the scraps of waste food that were thrown to dogs from
medieval baronial dining tables. The scraps were of no other use. Thus, if
someone is said to have 'gone to the dogs', he is also regarded as
worthless. |
| Got
up like a dog's dinner |
|
See 'Dolled
up like a dog's dinner'. |
| Green
Dogs |
|
An extinct breed, race or species. |
| Hair of the dog
(that bit you) |
|
Almost
invariably associated with the consumption of alcohol, this goes back to
the old belief that the hair of a dog that bites someone could be used as
an antidote against the bad effects of the bite. By extension, another
drink or two after a drinking binge would be the cure for a hangover. |
| Hang dog
attitude |
|
Used
to describe those who relentlessly carry a 'woe-is-me' attitude to life. |
| Hang dog
face |
|
Used
to describe those who facial expression reflects a 'woe-is-me' attitude to
life. |
| Happy
as a flea in a doghouse |
|
Very
happy. |
|
|
|
| Help
a lame dog over a stile |
|
To
give help to someone, enabling them to achieve something they couldn't
otherwise have achieved. Particularly where the ability of the person in
question has been compromised in some way. |
| Hot-dogging |
|
Acrobatic
skiing. |
| If
the dog hadn't stopped to take a shit (or any other vulgar
expression of excretion!) in the woods, he would have caught the
rabbit |
|
Said
on reviewing an event where the objective hadn't been achieved. To express
the opinion that well begun is half done. |
| If
you can't run with the big dogs, puppy, stay on the porch |
|
If
you're not comfortable with the way other people are dealing with an issue
at a higher level than you'd choose, stay out of it! (North America) |
| If
you lie down with dogs, you'll rise (awake, wake up, get up, possibly
end up) with fleas |
1. |
If you
do dangerous or silly things you will have to suffer the consequences (the
implication being that you shouldn't then complain!). |
|
2. |
Guilt
by association. |
|
3. |
If you
associate with bad people, you will acquire their faults. |
| In
the dog-house |
|
In
disgrace, in the way a dog may be banished from house to kennel. Alternatively,
and more contemporaneously, this expression is also a railroad term dating
back to the era of steam locomotives. The railroad unions mandated that a
head-end (front of the train) brakeman be so positioned. However, there
was no room for another person in the engine cab (which housed the
engineer and fireman). The railroads then built a small windowed shelter
on top of the engine tender (where the coal and water was stored) behind
the engine. It was called a doghouse since it was small, cramped, smoky,
cold and generally miserable. Thus, the expression 'he's in the
doghouse' referred to the brakeman in his uncomfortable moving shack.
(North America) |
| Isle
of Dogs |
|
When
Greenwich (near London, England) was a place of royal residence, the
kennel for the monarch's hounds was on the opposite side of the river,
hence called the 'Isle of Dogs'. |
| It's a dog eat
dog world out there |
|
See 'Dog eat
dog'. |
| It's a dog's
life |
|
Expression
of resignation to, or about, circumstances - particularly one's own. A
person can 'lead' another person a dog's life. |
| It's
an old dog for a hard road |
|
When
the task is difficult, experience will be invaluable. |
| It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog |
|
You cannot always tell how tough someone is by judging their physical characteristics. (USA) |
| It's
dogged as does it! |
|
Perseverance
and pluck win in the end. |
| It's
the dog's bollocks |
|
Something
that is an example of extreme excellence. One would have
expected to find dog's bollocks at the bottom of a scale of merit. Whilst
dogs do enjoy licking them, there's no evidence of a link between the activity
and the phrase. It is most likely just an audially-effective 'nonsense'
phrase, joining a long list of earlier-coined nonsense phrases of
excellence such as
'the cat's pyjamas' and 'the bee's knees'. |
| It
sticks out like a dog's bollocks |
|
Something
that the speaker thinks is patently obvious. |
| Keep a bad dog with you, and the good dogs won't bite |
|
Making friends with the tough guys in the neighbourhood guarantees that no-one else will want to fight with you. |
| Leading
a dog's life |
|
Said
about someone who is experiencing a miserable existence, often at the
hands of someone else, particularly a partner. |
| Let sleeping
dogs lie |
|
To leave a
situation undisturbed. |
| Let
the dog see the rabbit |
|
To
offer the opportunity of seeing what's to come; to whet the appetite.
Often sexual. |
| (...working,
hunting, cheating, lying) like a dog |
|
Do
whatever it is that's being done relentlessly, without pause for recovery.
Can be used in praise or criticism. |
| Like
a dog in a manger |
|
To be
spiteful and mean spirited. Like the proverbial dog who slept in a manger
not because he wanted to eat the hay there but to prevent the other
animals from doing so. Now used allusively to refer to any churlish
behaviour of that 'spoilsport' sort. |
| Like
a dog in shoes |
|
Making
a pattering sound. |
| Like
dog's breath |
|
Not
pleasant, not popular. |
| Like a lost dog in the high weeds |
|
Being lost with no idea of in which direction to go. (USA) |
| Love
me, love my dog |
|
If you
love someone, you should equally love that person's loves. |
| (A)
Man's best friend is his dog |
|
See
'A dog is (a) man's best friend'. |
| Make
a dog's match of it |
|
To have sexual
connection by the wayside. (Dis-gust-ing.) |
| Meaner
than a junk-yard dog |
|
Guard
dogs are generally regarded as the most ferocious (or 'mean') of dogs.
Hence this expression reflects how nasty a person is. The line is featured
in the 1973 hit 'Bad bad Leroy Brown', written and recorded by the
late Jim Croce. |
| My
dogs are barking |
|
My
feet are sore. |
| To
have not a dog's chance |
|
To
have no chance at all. |
| Old
dog |
|
A
lingering antique of a person. |
| On
the dog-watch |
|
On
night duty. |
| Pig dog |
|
Used as an exclamation to communicate that you are very angry with someone. (Germany). |
| Puppy's
mother |
|
See 'Doggess'. |
| Put
on the dog |
|
See 'Dog
it up'. |
| Raining
cats and dogs |
|
Raining
very hard. The phrase originated in 17th century England
when many dogs and cats drowned during heavy downpours of rain and when
rivers burst their banks. Their bodies would be seen floating in the rain
torrents that raced through the streets giving the appearance that it had
literally rained 'cats and dogs'. Another theory suggests that
thunder and lightning represent a cat and dog fight. Yet another theory
traces the origin of the phrase to ideas in ancient mythology that cats
could influence the weather, and that dogs were a symbol of the wind. |
| Sad
as a hound dog's eye |
|
Very
sad; pitiful. (North America) |
| See a man about
a dog |
|
Given as the
reason for departure when one is unwilling to reveal the true nature of
ones' business; particularly used when needing to visit the lavatory. |
| Sometimes you're the hydrant, and sometimes you're the dog |
|
There
are times when you are the winner or have the advantage in a situation
and there are times when you are the loser or at a disadvantage. |
| Tail wagging
the dog |
|
An unimportant
member of a group is actually directing everyone's activities. The subsidiary
part is controlling the major part. |
| Take
an old dirty, hungry, mangy, sick and wet dog and feed him and wash him
and nurse him back to health, and he will never turn on you and bite you.
This is how man and dog differ |
|
Does
what it says on the tin! |
| That dog won't
hunt |
|
Said
about something that isn't ready - and in extremis will never be ready -
to do either its job or the job that it was planned it should do. |
| The
Dog Act |
|
Any
such Act, or part of an Act, of Parliament enabling people to follow a
profession even though they are not academically qualified to do so. |
| The
dog before the master |
|
Nautical:
The heavy swell preceding a gale. |
| The
Dog Collar Act |
|
The
Transport Workers Act, 1942. (Australia) |
| The
dog-collar brigade |
|
The
clergy. |
| The
dogs |
|
Greyhound
race meeting. |
| The
dogs are barking it in the street |
|
Something
that is supposedly secret, but is very widely known; an open secret. |
| The
dogs haven't dined |
|
A
discrete comment to one whose shirt hangs out the back. |
| The quick brown
fox jumps over the lazy dog |
|
A pangram that has
been used to test the skills of typists and computer keyboard operators
because it is coherent, short, and contains all the letters of the English
alphabet. The phrase is frequently misquoted as 'The
quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog', which does not contain all
the letters of the alphabet since it lacks the letter 's'. For this
reason, the word 'slow' or 'sleeping' is sometimes inserted
into the phrase, or the word 'dog' is made plural. |
| The sun even shines on a dog's ass some days |
|
Sooner or later, everyone experiences some good luck. (USA) |
| Three dog night |
|
Originated with
the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed
down with three dogs to keep warm. (Canada) |
| To
be an old dog at it |
|
To be
expert at something. |
| To
be on the dog list |
|
To be
debarred from drinking. (Australia) |
| To
dog away time |
|
To
idle time away. |
| To
dog (someone) |
|
To
follow or persistently bother (someone). |
| Top dog |
|
One who is
dominant or victorious - in dog
fights, the winner comes out on top. Alternatively,
sawing logs was often done in a pit with one man in the pit and the other
above it, both working the saw. The one above was known as the 'top dog' and
the other as the 'bottom dog' (possibly 'under dog'). |
| Two dog night |
|
See 'Three
dog night'. |
| Under dog |
|
Sawing logs was often done in a pit with one man in the pit and the other
above it, both working the saw. The one above was known as the ' top dog' and
the other as the 'bottom dog' (possibly 'under dog'). |
| Unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes |
|
If
you are not the leader, then you will always see the same
(unsatisfactory, possibly unpleasing!) things and thus will not be
happy. (USA) |
| Whose
dog is dead? |
|
A colloquial
way of asking someone: "What's
the matter?" |
| You can't teach
an old dog new tricks |
1. |
Describes
a person
who, having over time developed a certain way of doing things,
refuses to change their ways, or to learn a new way of doing things. |
|
2. |
Said
by someone about themself, when someone is telling them something already
known; the implication that the first person knows more about the
subject than the second person. |
