Word.ws English Dictionary

mad dog

mad dog noun: a rabid dog.

Noun

mad dog (plural mad dogs)

  1. A rabid dog.
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Someone who is aggressive and fanatical; an aggressor who cannot be reasoned with.
    • Although the enemy saw that they were being hurt, they were such mad dogs that we could by no means prevent their pursuing us1843, Hernán Cortés, translated by George Folsom, Letters and Dispatches of Cortés
    • But in 1992, Bissell still maintained, "Lumumba and Sukarno were two of the worst people in public life I've ever heard of. They were mad dogs. Castro I saw not as a mad dog but as a purposeful antagonist. I believed that they were dangerous to the United States. There was a widespread belief that...1996, Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA, pages 232–233
  3. A McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series aircraft.

mad dog meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Sanskrit

mad dog in Tamil

சொறிகொள்ளிநாய்

mad dog in Malayalam

mad dog
പേപ്പട്ടി pēppaṭṭi

mad dog in Kannada

rabid dog
ಹುಚ್ಚುನಾಯಿ huccunāyi

mad dog in Sanskrit

mad dog, a dog who has consumed the clarified butter of an oblation
अलर्क alarka
More languagesFewer languages
mad dog in Arabic
سَگِ دِيوانَہ sag-e-dīvāna

Examples of mad dog in a sentence

  • Castro I saw not as a mad dog but as a purposeful antagonist.1996, Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA, pages 232–233:
  • We were resolute that those mad dogs should not get through.2007, Henry Van Dyke, The Valley of Vision, →ISBN, page 96:
  • Even their "soft tones" infuriated Bogan: "Stop the mad dogs of Fascism," these young communists mildly offered, "help our boys dodging Franco's bombs."2009, Alan Filreis, Counter-revolution of the Word, →ISBN:

Forms of mad dog

pluralmad dogs
alternative formmaddog
alternative formmad-dog

Words formed from mad dog

Questions about mad dog

What does mad dog mean?
Mad dog means a rabid dog.
What is mad dog in Tamil?
Mad dog in Tamil is சொறிகொள்ளிநாய். See Mad dog meaning in Tamil.
How do you use mad dog in a sentence?
Castro I saw not as a mad dog but as a purposeful antagonist.
What part of speech is mad dog?
Mad dog is a noun.
What is the plural of mad dog?
The plural of mad dog is mad dogs.

Words near mad dog in the dictionary

  1. mad cap
  2. mad caps
  3. mad cow
  4. mad cow disease
  5. mad cows
  6. mad dog
  7. mad dogs
  8. mad dogs and Englishmen
  9. mad enough to chew nails
  10. mad for it
  11. mad hatter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mad dog (page history and authors); mad dog (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); പേപ്പട്ടി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); अलर्क (Sanskrit) (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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Cite this entry: “mad dog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mad_dog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.