Word.ws English Dictionary

man bites dog

man bites dog phrase: a situation that is worth reporting on because it is unusual or bizarre.

Phrase

man bites dog

  1. A situation that is worth reporting on because it is unusual or bizarre.

Origin of man bites dog

Shortened version of a phrase attributed to various 19th-century journalists: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."

Words that rhyme with man bites dog

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about man bites dog

What does man bites dog mean?
Man bites dog means a situation that is worth reporting on because it is unusual or bizarre.
What part of speech is man bites dog?
Man bites dog is a phrase.

Words near man bites dog in the dictionary

  1. man apes
  2. man bag
  3. man bags
  4. man basket
  5. man baskets
  6. man bites dog
  7. man boob
  8. man boobs
  9. man boy
  10. man boys
  11. man bulge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: man bites dog (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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