Word.ws English Dictionary

dog that caught the car

dog that caught the car noun: a person who has unexpectedly attained an aspirational goal and is now unsure what to do with it.

Noun

dog that caught the car (plural dogs that caught the car)

  1. (colloquial, especially, idiomatic) A person who has unexpectedly attained an aspirational goal and is now unsure what to do with it.
    • So I went out, and I was telling the President about what a tough time being Governor was. I felt like the dog that caught the car; I really wasn't equipped to be governor... When I got ready to leave, I realized that I had bored a guy who had to make the decision to drop the bomb, telling him what...1987, Dale Bumpers, “Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution”, in Senate Hearings before the Committee on Appropriations, 99-1027, Pr. 2, p. 634
    • Mr Reynolds, you might be interested, who seems to be one of the six who run the Labor Party in Western Australia, says this about Mr Kobelke: 'As I have said before Mr Kobelke and the government are like a dog that caught the car—they didn't know what to do about it when they caught it.'"2002 May 15, Don Randall, “Workplace Relations Amendment (Prohibition of Compulsory Union Fees) Bill 2002: Second Reading”, in Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives (Official Hansard)...

Examples of dog that caught the car in a sentence

  • I felt like the dog that caught the car; I really wasn't equipped to be governor...1987, Dale Bumpers, “Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution”, in Senate Hearings before the Committee on...
  • In this sense, the GOP are the proverbial dog that caught the car.2022 May 10, Alex Shephard, “With Roe, the GOP Is the Dog that Caught the Car”, in The New Republic, archived from the original on 13 Jul...

Synonyms of dog that caught the car

Forms of dog that caught the car

pluraldogs that caught the car

Origin of dog that caught the car

From the instinctual urge of dogs to chase cars, most of which are traveling far and fast enough that they are never within reach.

Questions about dog that caught the car

What does dog that caught the car mean?
Dog that caught the car means a person who has unexpectedly attained an aspirational goal and is now unsure what to do with it.
How do you use dog that caught the car in a sentence?
I felt like the dog that caught the car; I really wasn't equipped to be governor...
What part of speech is dog that caught the car?
Dog that caught the car is a noun.
What is the plural of dog that caught the car?
The plural of dog that caught the car is dogs that caught the car.

Words near dog that caught the car in the dictionary

  1. dog team
  2. dog teams
  3. dog teeth
  4. dog tent
  5. dog tents
  6. dog that caught the car
  7. dog tired
  8. dog tooth
  9. dog tooths
  10. dog town
  11. dog towns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dog that caught the car (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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