one of any of various breeds of dogs trained to hunt or retrieve birds.
Informal. a person hired to locate special items or people, especially a talent scout who seeks out promising athletes.
Slang. a person who steals another person's date.
to follow, watch carefully, or investigate.
to seek out.
Informal. to follow or watch carefully.
Slang. to steal or attempt to steal another person's date.
An Americanism dating back to 1885–90
v. use of bird dog
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
On Saturday as she was discharged, she took to the lawn outside the hospital with the determination of a bird dog, nose to the ground and pulling on her leash.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 20, 2024
Salazar, whose office's organized crime investigators are looking into the issue, said a recruiter was paid a "bird dog fee" to recruit people to board a plane.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2022
“I wish I got as excited about anything as much as a bird dog going after a pheasant,” he once told reporters.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2017
But in a state with an official — deep breath — tree, bird, dog, animal, insect, amphibian, butterfly, saltwater fish, freshwater fish, rock, mineral, gem and, yes, tartan, some say the legislators have a point.
From US News ● Mar. 30, 2015
“I’m busy as a bird dog myself these days,” Grandma said.
From "A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck
Say what you will about his politics; the Tesla Model Y drives like a bird-dog in the hunt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
“It took three and a half years of weekly protests outside her office. Plus, we also had a bird-dog campaign against her. Every time we’d find out where she was, we’d go,” Abdullah explained.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2022
Now that we know how the show works, it's easy to bird-dog the secrets hiding in plain sight.
From Salon ● Jun. 26, 2022
The initial park-heavy, public-ownership vision for the property has, for the most part, been abandoned, although activists continue to bird-dog the development piece by piece as it comes up for permit review.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 6, 2018
He was seldom at rest, scampering here and there, not unlike a bird-dog on a fresh scent.
From The Master Mystery by Reeve, Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin)
“Politicians aren’t ignoring us anymore, and it’s because we agitated, we organized, and we bird-dogged these politicians every place they were.”
From Washington Post ● Nov. 9, 2021
Television crews bird-dogged passing senators with questions and quips.
From New York Times ● Jul. 28, 2017
They bird-dogged public hearings and visited Chambers of Commerce and Lions and Rotary Clubs, putting 200,000 miles on their truck.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2011
Over New Year's, they bird-dogged a line of student demonstrators on a four-day, 75-mile protest walk from Belfast to Londonderry.
From Time Magazine Archive
The organization will continue to use “the full set of tactics that we have used in the past,” said Prakash, meaning that Sunrise’s bird-dogging and sit-ins probably aren’t going anywhere.
From Slate ● Nov. 28, 2022
When they did make contact, they deployed a strategy known as bird-dogging, asking pointed questions about how a senator would be voting.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 6, 2018
In bird-dogging senators, I worked with one of our ace congressional correspondents, Thomas Kaplan, who honed his skills prying secrets out of the New York State Legislature.
From New York Times ● Aug. 2, 2017
His campaign has beefed up a team dedicated to bird-dogging the arcane state-by-state process of selecting delegates — which Trump is struggling to navigate — assigning each delegate to a dedicated campaign staffer for support.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 13, 2016
He's hand in glove with McCaffery and that blonde is bird-dogging him around town and pointing out McCaffery's enemies.
From "And That's How It Was, Officer" by Sholto, Ralph
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
