working dog
3
2.5
- noun
- /ˈwɜrkɪŋ dɔg/
:
perro de trabajo
- I can sedate him, of course, but he'll be useless as a working dog.
- military working dogs
See, Listener, what you don't realize is that a lot of you just have dogs that probably just are dogs at home pumps and I have dogs and our dogs are working dogs.
- See, Listener, what you don't realize is that a lot of you just have dogs that probably just are dogs at home pumps and I have dogs and our dogs are working dogs.
Examples
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It reminds me of this kid I knew in sixth grade. He had this plot of land his house was set on, about an acre, and he had this old working dog that ran the perimeter of their land all day long.
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If you mix all of those breeds together for several generations, while selecting those that were the best net haulers, retrievers, and working dogs, you'd get the St. John's water dog.
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Why not raise working dogs, train them to do it better and smarter than all the other farm dogs in the area?
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Well, remember how Charlie said Chinook was a working dog.
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They are working dogs, and people who really know how to handle dogs and aren't afraid of them take the time to work with them like a child.
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They were herding skate (rays) up against the beach like working dogs corralling sheep.
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And especially intelligent and attentive working dogs: bloodhounds, rescue dogs, sheep-herding dogs, explosive searchers, and suchlike.
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Determining the intelligence of a breed of dog isn't as easy as administering an IQ test, but there are some breeds that easily move to the head of the class, including herders and working dogs.
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A working dog is trained to help guide visually impaired individuals safely.
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The border collie is known as an excellent working dog for herding sheep on farms.
Antonyms
How Trained
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'working' modifies 'dog' to denote a dog that performs work, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to dogs bred or trained for tasks like herding, guarding, or guiding. This attributive pattern (adjective + noun meaning 'X that works') is common cross-linguistically and follows regular English composition, making it immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The noun working dog comes from the simple image of a dog that is actually working, like herding sheep, pulling a sled, or guiding a blind person. Because people saw these dogs doing 'jobs' for others, the phrase now means a dog bred and trained to help with such 'jobs'.