Idioms – Dogs

DOGS IDIOMS

This month we are looking at some idioms related to “dogs”. This is the second part of a mini-series.

Illustrations by Jorge Tarruella

A dogsbody (dogÔs-body)

A person who does routine, mechanical, boring jobs in a business or company: “I thought I would be working on really exciting projects, interviewing people and things like that, but in the end I turned out to be the office dogsbody.”

A dog’s dinner If you make a “dog’s dinner” of something, you do it really badly: “He tried to cut his own hair and made a real dog’s dinner of it.”

To throw somebody to the dogs To allow someone to be criticised or attacked in order to protect yourself from being criticised or attacked: “The president thought of the idea, but when it all went badly, she threw us to the dogs to save her own reputation.” His bark is worse than his bite This expression is used to refer to someone who is not so unkind or bad as they may seem to be: “She shouts a lot and gets really angry when things don’t go well, but I wouldn’t worry because her bark is worse than her bite.”

To lead a dog’s life To have a bad life that is miserable and hard: “I work 12 hours a day, then I get home and have to look after the baby till 12 at night, then get up again at 6 in the morning. It’s a dog’s life!”

To give a dog a bad name [and hang him] To say something bad about someone, knowing that this will give that person a bad reputation forever - a reputation that is impossible to eliminate: “Apparently, he once ‘borrowed’ a few pounds from the company safe, and now they call him Jimmy ‘The Thief’ Williams. It was a case of ‘give a dog a bad name’.” To work like a dog To work very hard: “I’m exhausted now because I’ve been working like a dog all week.”

G L O S S A R Y

Please note that some of the words in this glossary box are literal translations of parts of idiomatic expressions.

to turn out phr vb to have a particular result to bark vb when dogs “bark”, they make a lot of noise with their mouth to borrow vb if you “borrow” something from someone, you take it or use it for a short period of time, usually with their permission a safe n a strong box in which you can keep money or jewellery

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