dog and pony show
dog and pony show noun: a small traveling circus featuring animals as entertainment.
Noun
dog and pony show (plural dog and pony shows)
- A small traveling circus featuring animals as entertainment.
- Any presentation or display that is overly contrived or intricate, while lacking real substance.
- They put on a whole dog and pony show for the investors, but I'm not sure they've convinced anyone.
- Here, the academics put on a bit of a dog-and-pony show, demonstrating their latest breakthroughs and giving sponsors a chance to meet students who are about to receive their PhDs and start looking for jobs.[…]2012 January 8, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 119
Forms of dog and pony show
| plural | dog and pony shows |
|---|---|
| alternative form | dog-and-pony show |
Questions about dog and pony show
- What does dog and pony show mean?
- Dog and pony show means a small traveling circus featuring animals as entertainment.
- What part of speech is dog and pony show?
- Dog and pony show is a noun.
- What is the plural of dog and pony show?
- The plural of dog and pony show is dog and pony shows.
Words near dog and pony show in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dog and pony show (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-dog and pony show.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dog and pony show.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dog_and_pony_show. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.