dog
/dɒg/ noun [C]Definition
› informal an investment, company, or product that will probably fail
› MARKETING a product that has a small share of a market that has a low rate of growth → Compare Boston Matrix
dog eat dog informal › a situation in which competitors are willing to harm each other in order to be successful: It is dog eat dog on Las Vegas's world-famous Strip as huge casino complexes compete for attention. The fast-growing telecom industry was a dog-eat-dog world where firms were either looking to expand or ripe for takeover.
eat your own dog food informal › if a company eats its own dog food, it uses the products that it makes in its own business activities, rather than using products made by other companies: The company, which makes high-tech equipment, could not have grown as fast as it has without eating lots of its own dog food.
go to the dogs informal (also US go to hell in a handbasket/handcart) › to get into a very bad situation: The economy seems to be going to the dogs. Signs of a global recession inevitably conjure up thoughts of the last time we went to hell in a handbasket: the Great Depression of the 1930s.
that dog won't hunt US informal › used to say that a plan will fail → See also top dog
(Definition of dog noun from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary
© Cambridge University Press)
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