to buy a dog and bark
- idiom
- Archaic
:
asumir la responsabilidad
- Don't expect others to solve your problems; sometimes you have to buy a dog and bark.
Examples
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She decided to buy a dog and bark rather than depend on someone else's work.
-
If you want full control over the outcome, you should buy a dog and bark yourself.
-
You need to buy a dog and bark if you want to succeed!
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If you want results, you have to buy a dog and bark yourself.
-
Don't expect others to solve your problems; sometimes you have to buy a dog and bark.
-
If you want full control over the outcome, you should buy a dog and bark yourself.
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She decided to buy a dog and bark rather than depend on someone else's work.
Synonyms
43
7.0
Admit a fault or a personal quality and act confidently
28
5.3
Decide to do something and accept responsibility without being asked
7
6.5
To make your own decisions without other people telling you what to do
2
7.5
To be independent and take care of yourself without help
1
9.9
To do something yourself instead of asking someone else to do it
To do something without being asked or helped
To do work yourself when you hired someone else to do it
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal components ('buy' + 'dog' + 'bark') create a recognisable metaphor — owning a dog implies you must do its barking yourself — so a learner can partially infer the sense of taking responsibility from the constituents. However, this is proverb-like and relies on pragmatic/cultural inference rather than normal compositional rules, so a B1 learner who only knows the words would likely not predict the exact intended meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Buy a dog and bark may come from a simple picture: if you buy a dog you must be the one to make it bark and keep watch, not expect someone else to do the job. So it means 'take responsibility' or 'do the job yourself'.