"junkyard dog" meaning in English

See junkyard dog in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-junkyard dog.ogg [Australia] Forms: junkyard dogs [plural]
Etymology: From junkyard and dog. Non-literal sense popularized by the 1973 Jim Croce song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" (see citation below). Etymology templates: {{m|en|junkyard}} junkyard, {{m|en|dog}} dog Head templates: {{en-noun}} junkyard dog (plural junkyard dogs)
  1. (literally) An aggressive dog which guards a scrapyard or junkyard. Tags: literally
    Sense id: en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-ZIzMAgGh Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 32 32 36
  2. (idiomatic, by extension, hyphenated when used attributively) An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor. Tags: broadly, idiomatic Translations (An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor): chien de la casse [masculine] (French)
    Sense id: en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-s~YSwpBl Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 32 32 36 Disambiguation of 'An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor': 3 96 1
  3. A hot dog laden with toppings, such as onions, pineapples, or chili.
    Sense id: en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-ioSMEK9K Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 32 32 36

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for junkyard dog meaning in English (3.6kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "junkyard"
      },
      "expansion": "junkyard",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "dog"
      },
      "expansion": "dog",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From junkyard and dog. Non-literal sense popularized by the 1973 Jim Croce song \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\" (see citation below).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "junkyard dogs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "junkyard dog (plural junkyard dogs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "32 32 36",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936 July 23, “Dan D. Lyon”, in Scranton Republican, page 4",
          "text": "I saw nine dogs running en pack on South Washington Avenue ... They were making for a junkyard that appeared to be their headquarters ... And those junkyard dogs do make nights hideous for the neighbors",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An aggressive dog which guards a scrapyard or junkyard."
      ],
      "id": "en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-ZIzMAgGh",
      "links": [
        [
          "aggressive",
          "aggressive"
        ],
        [
          "guard",
          "guard"
        ],
        [
          "scrapyard",
          "scrapyard"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(literally) An aggressive dog which guards a scrapyard or junkyard."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "literally"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "32 32 36",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1973 Jim Croce, \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\", from the album Life and Times (song lyrics)",
          "text": "Badder than old King Kong / And meaner than a junkyard dog"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992 September 21, Janice Castro, “With Friends Like These ...”, in Time",
          "text": "House minority whip . . . Gingrich has earned enmity in abundance for his junkyard-dog tactics.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Peter Maravelis, San Francisco Noir, page 50",
          "text": "\"I'm gonna hire me a lawyer,\" he said. \"A real junkyard dog.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor."
      ],
      "id": "en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-s~YSwpBl",
      "links": [
        [
          "attributive",
          "attributive"
        ],
        [
          "nasty",
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        [
          "combative",
          "combative"
        ],
        [
          "demeanor",
          "demeanor"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "hyphenated when used attributively",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension, hyphenated when used attributively) An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "3 96 1",
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "chien de la casse"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
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          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A hot dog laden with toppings, such as onions, pineapples, or chili."
      ],
      "id": "en-junkyard_dog-en-noun-ioSMEK9K",
      "links": [
        [
          "hot dog",
          "hot dog"
        ],
        [
          "laden",
          "laden"
        ],
        [
          "topping",
          "topping"
        ],
        [
          "onion",
          "onion"
        ],
        [
          "pineapple",
          "pineapple"
        ],
        [
          "chili",
          "chili"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-junkyard dog.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e4/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown",
    "Jim Croce"
  ],
  "word": "junkyard dog"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
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        "1": "en",
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      "expansion": "dog",
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "From junkyard and dog. Non-literal sense popularized by the 1973 Jim Croce song \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\" (see citation below).",
  "forms": [
    {
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      "tags": [
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      "expansion": "junkyard dog (plural junkyard dogs)",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936 July 23, “Dan D. Lyon”, in Scranton Republican, page 4",
          "text": "I saw nine dogs running en pack on South Washington Avenue ... They were making for a junkyard that appeared to be their headquarters ... And those junkyard dogs do make nights hideous for the neighbors",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An aggressive dog which guards a scrapyard or junkyard."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "aggressive",
          "aggressive"
        ],
        [
          "guard",
          "guard"
        ],
        [
          "scrapyard",
          "scrapyard"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(literally) An aggressive dog which guards a scrapyard or junkyard."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "literally"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1973 Jim Croce, \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\", from the album Life and Times (song lyrics)",
          "text": "Badder than old King Kong / And meaner than a junkyard dog"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992 September 21, Janice Castro, “With Friends Like These ...”, in Time",
          "text": "House minority whip . . . Gingrich has earned enmity in abundance for his junkyard-dog tactics.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Peter Maravelis, San Francisco Noir, page 50",
          "text": "\"I'm gonna hire me a lawyer,\" he said. \"A real junkyard dog.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "attributive",
          "attributive"
        ],
        [
          "nasty",
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        ],
        [
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          "demeanor"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "hyphenated when used attributively",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension, hyphenated when used attributively) An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A hot dog laden with toppings, such as onions, pineapples, or chili."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "hot dog",
          "hot dog"
        ],
        [
          "laden",
          "laden"
        ],
        [
          "topping",
          "topping"
        ],
        [
          "onion",
          "onion"
        ],
        [
          "pineapple",
          "pineapple"
        ],
        [
          "chili",
          "chili"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-junkyard dog.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e4/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/En-au-junkyard_dog.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "An animal or person with an especially nasty and combative demeanor",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "chien de la casse"
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown",
    "Jim Croce"
  ],
  "word": "junkyard dog"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-22 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (fc4f0c7 and c937495). 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.