Word.ws English Dictionary

put on the dog

put on the dog verb: to dress up; to make a show of wealth and/or importance; to be pretentious.

Verb

put on the dog (third-person singular simple present puts on the dog, present participle putting on the dog, simple past and past participle put on the dog)

  1. (colloquial, dated, idiomatic) To dress up; to make a show of wealth and/or importance; to be pretentious.
    • If she softened her natural vowels a fraction in keeping with her role as a Protestant lady, she did not put on dog or act in a snobbish manner.1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber & Faber, published 2003, page 94
    Synonyms:
    put on airs

Synonyms of put on the dog

Forms of put on the dog

third-person singular presentputs on the dog
present participleputting on the dog
past participleput on the dog
pastput on the dog
alternative formput on dog

Questions about put on the dog

What does put on the dog mean?
Put on the dog means to dress up; to make a show of wealth and/or importance; to be pretentious.
What part of speech is put on the dog?
Put on the dog is a verb.
What is the past tense of put on the dog?
The past tense of put on the dog is put on the dog.

Words near put on the dog in the dictionary

  1. put on one's oxygen mask first
  2. put on one's pants one leg at a time
  3. put on one's trousers one leg at a time
  4. put on the block
  5. put on the brakes
  6. put on the dog
  7. put on the kibosh
  8. put on the long finger
  9. put on the map
  10. put on the pounds
  11. put on the red light

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put on the 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-put on the dog.ogg.

Cite this entry: “put on the dog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_on_the_dog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.