Word.ws English Dictionary

putting on the dog

putting on the dog is the present participle and gerund of put on the dog.

Meaning of put on the dog

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

Questions about putting on the dog

What is putting on the dog the present participle and gerund of?
Putting on the dog is the present participle and gerund of put on the dog.

Words near putting on the dog in the dictionary

  1. putting on frills
  2. putting on one's dancing shoes
  3. putting on one's own oxygen mask first
  4. putting on one's oxygen mask first
  5. putting on the block
  6. putting on the dog
  7. putting on the kibosh
  8. putting on the map
  9. putting on the pounds
  10. putting on the red light
  11. putting on the ritz

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: putting on the dog (page history and authors); 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.

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