Word.ws English Dictionary

dogs of war

dogs of war noun: the destructive capabilities of an army or war force.

Noun

dogs of war pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The destructive capabilities of an army or war force.
    • Many believe that this country should set the other nations of the world a great moral example by pulling the teeth of our dogs of war, making them lambs, and inviting the lions to lie down with them, unheedful of the lesson of all ages that when the lion does lie down with the lamb, the lamb is...2012, Hudson Maxim, Defenseless America
    • His tragedy is an eloquent critique of Europe's leaders, diplomats, and intellectuals who were, again, about to unleash the dogs of war.2013, Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place, page xiii

Examples of dogs of war in a sentence

  • It should not come to anyone's surprise that the dogs of war, once loosed, did not and do not take readily to the leash.2014, Robert Emmet Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War, page 107:
  • It became a practice on our side, at 10 o'clock each day, to turn all of these dogs of war loose upon the enemy for an hour or so.2015, Justin S. Solonick, Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg, page 140:

Origin of dogs of war

Coined by William Shakespeare in 1599 in "Julius Caesar," act 3, scene 1: : Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.

Questions about dogs of war

What does dogs of war mean?
Dogs of war means the destructive capabilities of an army or war force.
How do you use dogs of war in a sentence?
It should not come to anyone's surprise that the dogs of war, once loosed, did not and do not take readily to the leash.
What part of speech is dogs of war?
Dogs of war is a noun.

Words near dogs of war in the dictionary

  1. dogs have owners, cats have staff
  2. dogs in blankets
  3. dogs in mangers
  4. dogs in the manger
  5. dogs it
  6. dogs of war
  7. dogs out
  8. dogs that caught the car
  9. dogs' dinners
  10. dogs' lives
  11. dogs**t

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dogs of war (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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