"dogs of war" meaning in English

See dogs of war in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: Coined by William Shakespeare in 1599 in "Julius Caesar," act 3, scene 1: : Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war. Etymology templates: {{coin|en|William Shakespeare|in=1599}} Coined by William Shakespeare in 1599 Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} dogs of war pl (plural only)
  1. The destructive capabilities of an army or war force. Tags: plural, plural-only
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          "ref": "2012, Hudson Maxim, Defenseless America:",
          "text": "Many believe that this country should set the other nations of the world a great moral example by pulling the teeth of our dogs of war, making them lambs, and inviting the lions to lie down with them, unheedful of the lesson of all ages that when the lion does lie down with the lamb, the lamb is always inside the lion.",
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          "ref": "2014, Robert Emmet Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War, page 107:",
          "text": "It should not come to anyone's surprise that the dogs of war, once loosed, did not and do not take readily to the leash.",
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          "ref": "2015, Justin S. Solonick, Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg, page 140:",
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Download raw JSONL data for dogs of war meaning in English (2.1kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-21 using wiktextract (ce0be54 and f2e72e5). 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.

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