dog eat dog

D

dog eat dog

Meaning

• a very competitive world
• ruthlessly competitive business environment
• marked by destructive or ruthless competition, without self-restraint, ethics, etc.
• do anything to be successful, even if what they do harms other people
• getting ahead in life at any cost
• a place or situation that is highly competitive

Example Sentences

1. The only rule of the marketplace was dog-eat-dog.
2. It’s a dog-eat-dog
3. You have to look out for your own interests; it’s a dog-eat-dog
4. Your company fired you two days after you had a heart attack? Well, it’s undoubtedly a dog-eat-dog
5. It’s a dog eat dog world out there. You have to do whatever you can to survive.
6. Many colleges are like dog-eat-dog. People will compete at any cost for higher grades and not care if others get hurt in the process.
7. That school dog-eat-dog. The students cheat and even destroy each other’s work to get better grades.”
8. In the film, business dog eat dog, you’re a star one day, the next day you’ve been replaced by younger talent.
9. There is intense competition and rivalry in a dog-eat-dog world, where everybody thinks only of himself or herself.
10. In the dog eat dog world out there, it pays to know who one’s real friends are.

Origin

The term “dog eat dog” is a relatively modern idiom that directly contradicts an old Latin saying – canis caninam non est, which means “a dog does not eat the flesh of a dog.”

It is believed that the earliest entry of this idiom in English prints was recorded in 1543.

Later, Thomas Fuller wrote in Gnomologia, in 1732:

“Dogs are hard drove when they eat dogs.”

The present version of the expression, which is still pretty popular, was in use by the early 1800s.”

Animal, Business, Controversy, Dog