bulldog
Americannoun
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bulldogs
plural
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one of an English breed of medium-sized, short-haired, muscular dogs with prominent, undershot jaws, usually having a white and tan or brindled coat, raised originally for bullbaiting.
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Informal. a stubbornly persistent person.
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a short-barreled revolver of large caliber.
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Metallurgy. slag from a puddling furnace.
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an assistant to the proctor at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
adjective
verb (used with object)
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to attack in the manner of a bulldog.
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Western U.S. to throw (a calf, steer, etc.) to the ground by seizing the horns and twisting the head.
noun
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a sturdy thickset breed of dog with an undershot jaw, short nose, broad head, and a muscular body
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(at Oxford University) an official who accompanies the proctors on ceremonial occasions
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commerce a fixed-interest bond issued in Britain by a foreign borrower
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bulldog
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But most of these intellectual flights are cleverly couched in the jowly mundanities of bulldog existence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Rowbottom and Lindsey work side by side from adjoining desks in their lofted home office, a French bulldog named Jammy snoring between them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 1, 2026
Play, a four-year-old French bulldog, waddled down the street in Noho.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton races for the first time since the death of his bulldog Roscoe last weekend.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2025
He’d discovered that he got through the night much better if he curled up on his bunk in the shape of a bulldog.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
“We’ve seen it in Dalmatians when ‘101 Dalmatians’ came out, or retrievers when ‘Marley & Me’ came out, or French bulldogs when Lady Gaga got her French bulldog” in 2014, said Munden.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
“Due to the unique anatomy of their airways, bulldogs can experience more respiratory distress in their golden years and may also have a harder time regulating their temperature as a result,” Greenstein says.
From MarketWatch ● May 19, 2026
We bought a house in the Valley, have two rescue bulldogs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2026
You got some of the biggest bulldogs in Congress on the R and D side all working on this.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2025
About the only dogs I had ever known were Harry de Vries’ bulldogs.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
Next day one was still at large in the countryside; the other was bulldogged after he darted into a ball game, tossed two would-be captors, and tried to gore an automobile.
From Time Magazine Archive
One of the Africans who publicly agreed with Stevenson was Nigeria's earthy, bulldogged Foreign Minister Jaja Wachuku, who noted that the wild, radical charges were not "the only opinion that exists within the African scene."
From Time Magazine Archive
Hughes's bulldogged determination could make things interesting at the end.
From Time Magazine Archive
Rozier is a brute with guile, whose balance is such that he seems to be bulldogged off the field more often than he is tumbled off his feet.
From Time Magazine Archive
With my three little traps and a bulldogged determination, I set out to trap Mister Ringtail.
From "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls
“And the amount of energy and the amount of focus you need to have in bulldogging is the same as in football.”
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 12, 2023
Fort Collins, for instance, was supposed to have goat roping, steer bulldogging competitions, a shooting exhibition from the U.S.
From Slate ● Jul. 4, 2021
William “Bill” Pickett was a famous rodeo star credited with founding the sport bulldogging, also known as steer wrestling.
From Fox News ● Jul. 3, 2020
“Some guys just have a knack of bulldogging their way through an inning, you know?”
From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2014
Mr. Huxley stopped in a few times while they were there, to take breaks from his bulldogging and to get more direction and advice from Charles.
From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman
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.
