See alpha-dog on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "alpha-dogs",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogging",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogged",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogged",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "alpha-dog (third-person singular simple present alpha-dogs, present participle alpha-dogging, simple past and past participle alpha-dogged)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2016 September 27, James Poniewozik, “How the Split Screen Framed Trump and Clinton”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "At the left was Mr. Trump, the volatile presence who alpha-dogged a season of Republican debates. Now he grimaced, squinted, nodded, pursed his lips, sniffed, huffed and interrupted, becoming, over the night, an agitated man in a box.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2018 October 22, Peter Conrad, “Full Disclosure by Stormy Daniels review – duck, Donald…”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "Stormy boasts that she has “grown balls”. Given her “alpha-dogging” of Trump and her jokes about his furry sporran, who knows whether this is more than a metaphor?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 November 6, Mike White, “Italian Dream”, in Mike White, director, The White Lotus, season 2, episode 2, via HBO:",
"text": "Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza): And I don't know, I guess, I just don't want him rubbing off on you. You know, and I don't like the way he alpha-dogs you.\nEthan Spiller (Will Sharpe): He doesn't alpha-dog me. I mean, he kind of used to, I guess, but it's different now.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male."
],
"id": "en-alpha-dog-en-verb-mhWpwYGi",
"links": [
[
"behave",
"behave"
],
[
"alpha dog",
"alpha dog"
],
[
"crassly",
"crassly"
],
[
"dominant",
"dominant"
],
[
"male",
"male"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, chiefly US) To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male."
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal"
]
}
],
"word": "alpha-dog"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "alpha-dogs",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogging",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogged",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "alpha-dogged",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "alpha-dog (third-person singular simple present alpha-dogs, present participle alpha-dogging, simple past and past participle alpha-dogged)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English informal terms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2016 September 27, James Poniewozik, “How the Split Screen Framed Trump and Clinton”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "At the left was Mr. Trump, the volatile presence who alpha-dogged a season of Republican debates. Now he grimaced, squinted, nodded, pursed his lips, sniffed, huffed and interrupted, becoming, over the night, an agitated man in a box.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2018 October 22, Peter Conrad, “Full Disclosure by Stormy Daniels review – duck, Donald…”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "Stormy boasts that she has “grown balls”. Given her “alpha-dogging” of Trump and her jokes about his furry sporran, who knows whether this is more than a metaphor?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 November 6, Mike White, “Italian Dream”, in Mike White, director, The White Lotus, season 2, episode 2, via HBO:",
"text": "Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza): And I don't know, I guess, I just don't want him rubbing off on you. You know, and I don't like the way he alpha-dogs you.\nEthan Spiller (Will Sharpe): He doesn't alpha-dog me. I mean, he kind of used to, I guess, but it's different now.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male."
],
"links": [
[
"behave",
"behave"
],
[
"alpha dog",
"alpha dog"
],
[
"crassly",
"crassly"
],
[
"dominant",
"dominant"
],
[
"male",
"male"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, chiefly US) To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male."
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal"
]
}
],
"word": "alpha-dog"
}
Download raw JSONL data for alpha-dog meaning in All languages combined (2.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-02 using wiktextract (db0bec0 and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.