three-dog night
1
9.8
- noun
- Informal
:
noche de tres perros
- Last night was a three-dog night!
Examples
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It’s going to be a three-dog night—better pile on the quilts!
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Last winter, we had a three-dog night that froze the pipes in the kitchen.
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Campers know to expect a three-dog night during the harshest months in the mountains.
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It was a three-dog night yesterday!
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It was such a freezing evening that we jokingly called it a three-dog night.
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During the winter, everyone knows to prepare for a three-dog night when the temperatures drop dramatically.
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After the temperature plummeted, I realized it would be a three-dog night for sure.
How Cold
Surface Forms
Morphology
three-dog + night
The phrase is built from transparent parts ('three' + 'dog' + 'night') and evokes a literal image — a night so cold you need three dogs for warmth — so a learner could potentially infer the basic sense. However, understanding that this image conventionalises to mean 'extremely cold night' relies on cultural/figurative knowledge and is not a standard compositional pattern, making the relation only partially predictable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The phrase three-dog night comes from people who slept with dogs in very cold cabins to stay warm. If they needed three dogs in the bed, the night was extremely cold, so the phrase means 'an extremely cold night'.