noun
-
close quarters combat between fighter aircraft
-
any rough violent fight
Etymology
Origin of dogfight
1650–60; 1915 dogfight for def. 2; dog + fight
Vocabulary lists containing dogfight
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:
Mexico and Brazil are in a caramelo dogfight.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 3, 2026
"Nobody really has ever tried to interweave an actual plot story into a dogfight, and we were trying to do that."
From BBC ● May 30, 2026
Last weekend Osasuna winger Munoz impressed as his team won away for the first time all season, for back-to-back wins to take them away from the relegation dogfight.
From Barron's ● Jan. 30, 2026
Medals of honor tend to require eyewitnesses, though Mr. Issa notes that Soviet records testify to the dogfight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 22, 2025
On the day of the parade they drew crowds faster than a dogfight on a country road.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
Running at MIT on a $120,000 computer the size of a Buick, Russell’s “Spacewar” was a two-player game centered on dogfighting space rockets in flight around a sun.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 9, 2026
The Pentagon calls it “synchronized proximity maneuvers,” which is what happens when military bureaucrats try to describe dogfighting in space without using the word “dogfighting.”
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2025
A young James Whale directed the talkie sequences while Hughes helmed and designed the dogfighting sequences.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2020
Their topics ranged from guilty pleas in an investigation of a dogfighting ring on Long Island to a lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
From New York Times ● May 9, 2018
Before they’d even had a chance to return to the airfield, Lilya saw that Raisa Belyaeva was dogfighting with a Luftwaffe fighter plane.
From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein
At every stage, you are jostled along by reports of your ongoing accomplishments—thirty thousand steps taken, fifty alien words collected, ten pirate ships dogfought.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 10, 2016
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.
