doggery

Noun

doggery (countable and uncountable, plural doggeries)

1. (countable, obsolete) A squalid tavern.
   • There is an enemy of religion here, who […] keeps a public house, and also a "doggery." […] By his "doggery," he keeps around him a gang of ten or fifteen of the most abandoned persons, whom he employs as assistants in carrying out his nefarious schemes. When intoxicated, he is most abusive; […]1846, Home Missionary, volume 19, page 125
   • 1829. Atwater Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien.... Page 59 in context of mixed race community at of Am. Fur Co. station at Keokuck, Iowa: "their lights on the rapids, in a dark night, were darting about, appearing and disappearing like so many fire flies; the constant roaring of the...
2. (dated, uncountable) Bestial or underhand behaviour.
   • "There's a lot of 'doggery' about this business," my informant added musingly.1908, The Nation, volume 4, page 379
   • Then it is all doggery and devilry and there is no God and no mercy.1935, Frank Philpott Bacon, The Use of Spiritualism in the Drama, page 126
3. (uncountable) Dogs generally; the realm or sphere of dogs.
   • […] we'd distinguish an "entelechial" dog, the "compleat" dog toward which all doggery variously aspires […]1967, Stanley Romaine Hopper, David LeRoy Miller, Interpretation: the Poetry of Meaning, page 84