dog's breakfast

Noun

dog's breakfast (plural dog's breakfasts)

1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, idiomatic) An unappealing mixture; a disorderly situation; a mess.
   • So complex was the scheme that neither blacks nor whites could say for certain who had won. "A dog's breakfast," cried Laborite M.P. James Callaghan. "I say frankly that I do not begin to understand it."1961 July 7, “Black Temper”, in Time, archived from the original on 03 Feb 2012
   • Critics here are reserving judgement on whether ABC will do "Life in Mars" justice or make a dog's breakfast of it.2008 May 18, David Usborne, “The Gene Genie gets an LA makeover”, in The Independent, retrieved 09 Jun 2008

   Synonyms:

   cat's breakfast, pig's breakfast, hodgepodge, pig's ear, dog's dinner, bedlam, car crash, chaos, confusion, disarray

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dog, breakfast.
   • And the next morning she got up to fix breakfast: the old lady had told her, she had to fix her breakfast, the old lady's breakfast, the cat's breakfast, the dog's breakfast, and the bull's breakfast.(Can we date this quote?), Alfred Anderson, “59. The Lazy Sisters and the Smart Sister”, in Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana, University Press of Mississippi, page 133