Word.ws English Dictionary

work dog

work dog noun: a working dog; a dog breed created to perform specific tasks (e.g. herding).

Noun

work dog (plural work dogs)

  1. A working dog; a dog breed created to perform specific tasks (e.g. herding).
    • Wisps of straw stuck in the workdog’s coat, mud was on her feet, she reeked of cow.1944, Emily Carr, “The Cousins’ Bobtails”, in The House of All Sorts
    • Roy is my best work dog, a real powerhouse. He is very intelligent and I can trust him to do anything — whether it’s bringing in the big aggressive male sheep […] or gently catching a baby lamb who’s become separated from its mother.2012 April 13, Emma Gray, “Love me, love my dogs”, in The Daily Mail

Forms of work dog

pluralwork dogs
alternative formworkdog

Origin of work dog

From work + dog.

Questions about work dog

What does work dog mean?
Work dog means a working dog; a dog breed created to perform specific tasks (e.g. herding).
What part of speech is work dog?
Work dog is a noun.
What is the plural of work dog?
The plural of work dog is work dogs.

Words near work dog in the dictionary

  1. work bowls
  2. work camp
  3. work camps
  4. work day
  5. work days
  6. work dog
  7. work dogs
  8. work double tides
  9. work envelope
  10. work envelopes
  11. work environment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: work 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: “work dog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/work_dog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.