dogsbody

1 9.4

A person who does boring, small jobs that others avoid

noun
/ˈdɔɡzˌbɑdi/

: chico de los recados

Having a couple of police officers forcibly hold a woman down while a sergeant shoves his hand up her vagina on the grounds that "It's just Mabel Dogsbody again and everybody in town knows about Mabel" really is illegal.

Examples

Poor dogsbody.

Bloom (2003)
What he had me doing was mostly dogsbody work.

Fiction book (2001)
The wood job might not last, so it's best if you can leverage it into dogsbody work unless you're on a journey.

Blog text (8)
Brad concentrated on Raymond Masters, Dr. Maelstrom's dogsbody, for all his brilliance.

Fiction book (1995)
As the new intern, I often felt like a dogsbody, running errands and completing tasks that no one else wanted to do.
In many offices, junior staff members frequently act as dogsbodys, handling the tedious chores that others avoid.
He was tired of being treated like a dogsbody and wanted more meaningful work instead of just doing the dirty jobs.

Antonyms

leader

∞ 1.0

A person who guides and directs a group, organization, or country

manager

∞ 1.6

A person who controls money and work in a company

How Menial

drudge

5 8.1

dogsbody

1 9.4

assistant

813 1.0

Surface Forms

dogsbody singular

dogs bodies plural

Morphology

dogsbody = dog + body (opaque) = dog + body

Although formed from 'dog' + 'body', the idiomatic meaning 'person given menial tasks' cannot be derived from the component meanings.

Etymology

Dogsbody comes from an old navy phrase dog's body, which was a name for 'cheap food' given to young sailors. People then used the phrase for those sailors who did the small, dirty jobs, so a dogsbody today is someone given the boring, low work that others avoid.