Word.ws English Dictionary

curtail dogs

curtail dogs is the plural of curtail dog.

Meaning of curtail dog

Noun

curtail dog (plural curtail dogs)

  1. (obsolete) A dog with a docked tail; formerly, the dog of a person not qualified to course, which, by the forest laws, must have its tail cut short, partly as a mark, and partly from a notion that the tail is necessary to a dog in running.
    • Oh that I were but King of France for fourscore or a hundred years! By G--, I should whip like curtail-dogs these runaways of Pavia.1653, Francis Rabelais [i.e., François Rabelais], translated by [Thomas Urquhart, Peter Anthony Motteux], The Works of Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick...
  2. (broadly, obsolete) A dog not fit for sporting.
    • Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Questions about curtail dogs

What is curtail dogs the plural of?
Curtail dogs is the plural of curtail dog.

Words near curtail dogs in the dictionary

  1. curt
  2. curt-axe
  3. curt.
  4. curtail
  5. curtail dog
  6. curtail dogs
  7. curtailable
  8. curtailed
  9. curtailed fox
  10. curtailed foxes
  11. curtailer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: curtail dogs (page history and authors); curtail 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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