Idiom
junkyard dog
Meaning
An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He acts like a junkyard dog when he loses a game.”
“The manager became a real junkyard dog during the meeting, attacking every suggestion the team made.”
“Despite his professional appearance, he revealed himself to be a junkyard dog, fighting every minor point with unnecessary aggression and hostility.”
Examples
simple
“He acts like a junkyard dog when he loses a game.”
contextual
“The manager became a real junkyard dog during the meeting, attacking every suggestion the team made.”
complex
“Despite his professional appearance, he revealed himself to be a junkyard dog, fighting every minor point with unnecessary aggression and hostility.”
Origin
From junkyard + dog. The literal sense of the compound was popularised in 1973 by the Jim Croce song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, which employed the animal as a benchmark for the protagonist's temperament.
Key words
Related idioms
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