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From dog + eared(“having ears (of a specified type)”), modelled after dog’s-ear(obsolete), due to the similarity of their appearance to the folded ears of certain dogs. The word is analysable as dog-ear(“to fold the corner of a book’s page”) + -ed(suffix forming possessional adjectives) (dog-ear is attested in print later than dog-eared).
There was the huge Italian cassone, with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.
To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books— third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee, of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
Dog-eared tomes litter his sitting room, filled with lovely names – Sailor, Scandal, Saucebox, Starlight, Siren, to take a few from a random page of the directory for 1875.
This is the old, old pain come home once more, Bent down with answers wild and very lame For all my delving in old dog-eared lore That drove the Sages mad. And boots the world Aught for their wisdom?
1983 April 23, Michael Bronski, “Coming of Age, Dutch Style”, in Gay Community News, page 13:
All this is somewhat unfair to Spetters which, in spite of all of its borrowings, and conventional form, manages to remain remarkably fresh and original. Director Verhoeven seems to specialize in turning dogeared plots into nice silk purses of movies.
of a page in a book or other publication: having its corner folded down, either due to having been read many times, or intentionally as a sort of bookmark
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “dog-eared, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
