doggery

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English

Etymology

dog +‎ -ery

Noun

doggery (countable and uncountable, plural doggeries)

  1. (countable, obsolete) A squalid tavern.
    • 1846, Home Missionary, volume 19, page 125:
      There is an enemy of religion here, who [] keeps a public house, and also a "doggery." [] By his "doggery," he keeps around him a gang of ten or fifteen of the most abandoned persons, whom he employs as assistants in carrying out his nefarious schemes. When intoxicated, he is most abusive; []
  2. (uncountable, dated) Bestial or underhand behaviour.
    • 1908, The Nation, volume 4, page 379:
      "There's a lot of 'doggery' about this business," my informant added musingly.
    • 1935, Frank Philpott Bacon, The Use of Spiritualism in the Drama, page 126:
      Then it is all doggery and devilry and there is no God and no mercy.
    • 1961, Boys' Life, volume 51, number 11, page 13:
      They fed on oily carcasses washed down with rum, brawled away the evenings, and collapsed each night in drunken stupor. After a week of this doggery, they made the rounds again, gathering freshly laid eggs, []
  3. (uncountable) Dogs generally; the realm or sphere of dogs.
    • 1967, Stanley Romaine Hopper, ‎David LeRoy Miller, Interpretation: the Poetry of Meaning (page 84)
      we'd distinguish an "entelechial" dog, the "compleat" dog toward which all doggery variously aspires

References

  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary