Word.ws English Dictionary

wagging the dog

wagging the dog is the present participle and gerund of wag the dog.

Meaning of wag the dog

Verb

wag the dog (third-person singular simple present wags the dog, present participle wagging the dog, simple past and past participle wagged the dog)

  1. (idiomatic) To divert negative political attention by use of a military operation.
  2. Used in a phrasal verb: the tail wags the dog: to control, as a minor part, a larger thing; to be the tail wagging the dog.

Questions about wagging the dog

What is wagging the dog the present participle and gerund of?
Wagging the dog is the present participle and gerund of wag the dog.

Words near wagging the dog in the dictionary

  1. waggin
  2. wagging
  3. wagging a finger
  4. wagging hemp
  5. wagging it
  6. wagging the dog
  7. waggingly
  8. waggings
  9. waggins
  10. waggish
  11. waggishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wagging the dog (page history and authors); wag 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: “wagging the dog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wagging_the_dog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.