bottom dog
1
9.2
- noun
- Offensive
:
don nadie
- Don't be a bottom dog!
Examples
-
She knew what it felt like to be the bottom dog and worked hard to prove herself.
-
Many people root for the bottom dog in a competition, hoping for an upset victory.
-
As the bottom dog in the company, he often got the least desirable assignments.
-
In this competition, he feels like a bottom dog.
-
In the corporate world, the bottom dog often struggles to get a promotion.
-
Despite being the bottom dog in the competition, he gave it his all.
-
The bottom dog in the debate team rarely gets a chance to speak.
Synonyms
73
3.7
A person or team expected to lose a competition
4
5.9
A person who has lower rank or status than others
Antonyms
How Low
Surface Forms
Morphology
bottom + dog
The meaning 'a person with low status/likely to lose' is directly derivable from combining 'bottom' (lowest position) with 'dog' used metaphorically for a person; this follows a transparent antonymic pattern to the familiar 'top dog' construction. Because the parts contribute their ordinary senses and the composition is predictable rather than arbitrary, a B1 learner who knows the words should infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Bottom dog may come from images of dogs in fights or in a group, where the bottom dog is the weakest and pushed down by the others. So the phrase came to mean someone with 'low status' who is likely 'to lose'.