hound dog

noun, verb — 3 senses

hound dog

nounalso spelled hound-dog
1

Southern US, Dialectal Any hound, especially the bloodhound.

  • You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Cryin' all the time. You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Cryin' all the time. Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit And you ain't no friend of mine.1956, “Hound Dog”, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (revised by Elvis Presley) (lyrics), performed by Elvis Presley:
2

Slang A promiscuous man.

Derived terms
hound-dog

hound-dog

verb
1

Slang, Uncommon To aggressively, relentlessly, or single-mindedly pursue something, often a person for romantic or sexual interest.

  • Taylor denied that McCann asked where he was supposed to turn his gear in, but agreed that he asked the real reason why McCann quit, to which McCann answered he felt like he was being hound-dogged too much.1977, United States, National Labor Relations Board, Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, Volume 224, page 853:
  • And you get a lesson in turkey behavior by hound-dogging the footsteps of these shrewd giants.1978, Dennis Walrod, “Stalking The Monster Birds”, in Field & Stream, volume 83, number 6, page 158:
3 more examples
  • "Oh, nothing at all. I’ve been hounddogging this mob for what, four, five years?"1985, William Diehl, Hooligans, page 27:
  • She tapped her toe anxiously. "You ought to be hound-dogging the murderer instead of terrorizing little old ladies."2007, Cindy Keen Reynders, The Saucy Lucy Murders, Book One in the Saucy Lucy Series:
  • The night-fighters hound-dogged the three bombers for over a hundred miles but never managed to pull within effective firing range.2019, Steven K. Bailey, Bold Venture, The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942–1945, page 60:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for hound dog and hound-dog.