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kicks a dog when it's down

kicks a dog when it's down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of kick a dog when it's down.

Meaning of kick a dog when it's down

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

Questions about kicks a dog when it's down

What is kicks a dog when it's down the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Kicks a dog when it's down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of kick a dog when it's down.

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

  1. kickover
  2. kickovers
  3. kickplate
  4. kickplates
  5. kicks
  6. kicks a dog when it's down
  7. kicks about
  8. kicks against
  9. kicks against the pricks
  10. kicks and giggles
  11. kicks around

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kicks a dog when it's down (page history and authors); 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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