Word.ws English Dictionary

kick a dog when it's down

kick a dog when it's down verb: to make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.

Verb

kick a dog when it's down (third-person singular simple present kicks a dog when it's down, present participle kicking a dog when it's down, simple past and past participle kicked a dog when it was down)

  1. (idiomatic) To make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.
    • but we learned for the first time last Monday night that the Atalantas would kick a dog when he's down. We were beaten ten pins; of course the At-A-lantas (as Spark puts it) will claim one hundred and ten, but the hundred were felled by Miller jumping on the alleys.1891, The Wheel and Cycling Trade Review, volume 6
    • I don't like to kick a dog when he's down, and Earns has had a heap of trouble with his father's death and all1919, Jewell Bothwell Tull, “The Phantom Lion of Goodrich Creek”, in South Dakota Educator, volume 33

Synonyms of kick a dog when it's down

Forms of kick a dog when it's down

third-person singular presentkicks a dog when it's down
present participlekicking a dog when it's down
past participlekicked a dog when it was down
pastkicked a dog when it was down

Questions about kick a dog when it's down

What does kick a dog when it's down mean?
Kick a dog when it's down means to make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.
What part of speech is kick a dog when it's down?
Kick a dog when it's down is a verb.
What is the past tense of kick a dog when it's down?
The past tense of kick a dog when it's down is kicked a dog when it was down.

Words near kick a dog when it's down in the dictionary

  1. Kichuas
  2. Kichwa
  3. Kicinski
  4. kick
  5. Kick 'em Jenny
  6. kick a dog when it's down
  7. kick about
  8. kick against
  9. kick against the pricks
  10. kick and buck
  11. kick and bucks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kick a dog when it's down (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-kick a dog when it's down.wav.

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