three dog night
idiom

- a bitterly cold night (i.e., so cold that one would need their dogs in bed with them to stay warm)

The Farlex Free Dictionary

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ORIGIN

“Dog” Old English docga is one of the great mysteries of English etymology.

Docga forced out Old English hund (the general Germanic and Indo-European word) by the 16th century and subsequently was picked up in many continental languages like French dogue, Danish dogge, German Dogge.

In ancient times, “the dog” was the worst throw in dice, as attested in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit; where the word for “the lucky player” was literally “the dog-killer”.

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DOGGY IDIOMS

- to be dog-tired = very tired (Bruno was dog-tired after working a double-shift at the factory.)

- let sleeping dogs lie = you let sleeping dogs lie when you choose to not talk about things which have caused problems in the past (Can we please just let sleeping dogs lie? I don’t want to discuss the matter any further.)

- to work like a dog = to work very hard (Jane has worked like a dog to finish the report before the deadline.)

- to be like a dog with a bone = to refuse to stop talking or thinking about something, to not give up (When it comes to talking about politics, Jim is like a dog with a bone.)

- to be the doghouse = a situation in which someone is angry with you for something you did or did not do (If I’m late for work again, I’ll really be in the doghouse.)

- dog days = the hottest days of the summer; a period of inactivity or decline (On three dog nights, it’s hard to imagine the dog days of summer.)

- dog-eared = a book or paper that looks worn because of the way people turned down the top corner of a page (Most of her dog-eared books were also full of notes written in the margins.)

- to be like a dog with two tails = to be very happy (Jenny will be like a dog with two tails when she hears about her promotion.)

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DOGGY WISDOM

- “Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself”
- “Love me: love my dog”
- “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”
- “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
- “Lie down with dogs: get up with fleas”

“The difference between a man and a dog is that if you feed a dog, it won’t bite you.” (Mark Twain)

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SYNONYMS
extremely and unpleasantly cold:

antarctic, arctic, below freezing, below zero, benumbed, biting, bitter, bitterly cold, blasting, bone-chilling, bracing, brass monkeys, chilled to the bone/marrow, chilling, chilly, cold as ice, crisp, cutting, freezing, frigorific, frost-bound, frozen to the marrow, glacial, hypothermic, ice-cold, icicled, knifelike, one-dog night, polar, refrigerated, shivery, Siberian, snappy, sub-zero, THREE DOG NIGHT

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“With global warming, THREE DOG NIGHTS may become just a memory of the past."

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Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40