Word.ws English Dictionary

alpha-dogging

alpha-dogging is the present participle and gerund of alpha-dog.

Meaning of alpha-dog

Verb

alpha-dog (third-person singular simple present alpha-dogs, present participle alpha-dogging, simple past and past participle alpha-dogged)

  1. (US, informal) To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male.
    • 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.2016 September 27, James Poniewozik, “How the Split Screen Framed Trump and Clinton”, in The New York Times

Questions about alpha-dogging

What is alpha-dogging the present participle and gerund of?
Alpha-dogging is the present participle and gerund of alpha-dog.

Words near alpha-dogging in the dictionary

  1. alpha-cyperone
  2. alpha-d-galactosidase
  3. alpha-d-galactosidases
  4. alpha-dog
  5. alpha-dogged
  6. alpha-dogging
  7. alpha-dogs
  8. alpha-ed up
  9. alpha-fetoprotein
  10. alpha-foetoprotein
  11. alpha-gal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alpha-dogging (page history and authors); alpha-dog (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “alpha-dogging.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alpha-dogging. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.