Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An animal or plant resulting from various interbreedings, especially a dog of mixed or undetermined breed.
- noun Offensive A person of mixed background or descent.
- noun Something that is a mixture or combination of elements.
- adjective Of mixed origin or character.
- adjective Offensive Being a person of mixed background or descent.
- adjective Being a mongrel organism.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To make mongrel; mongrelize.
- noun An individual or a breed of animals resulting from repeated crossing or mixture of several different varieties; the progeny of varieties, and especially of artificial varieties, as distinguished from the hybrid, or cross between two different species (but the distinction is not always observed).
- noun Specifically, a dog of mixed breed.
- noun Anything of mixed breed; anything that is a mixture of incongruous elements.
- Of a mixed or impure breed; begotten or made up of different kinds: usually in a disreputable sense.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The progeny resulting from a cross between two breeds, as of domestic animals; anything of mixed breed.
- adjective (Zoöl.) Not of a pure breed.
- adjective Of mixed kinds.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Someone or something of mixed kind or uncertain origin; especially, a dog that is such.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an inferior dog or one of mixed breed
- noun derogatory term for a variation that is not genuine; something irregular or inferior or of dubious origin
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Although mong, from the Old English gemong, meaning “mixture,” is still with us in the form of among, the word mongrel has gained an ugly, snarling connotation; for years mongrelization was a term used by racists.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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Although mong, from the Old English gemong, meaning “mixture,” is still with us in the form of among, the word mongrel has gained an ugly, snarling connotation; for years mongrelization was a term used by racists.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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Although mong, from the Old English gemong, meaning “mixture,” is still with us in the form of among, the word mongrel has gained an ugly, snarling connotation; for years mongrelization was a term used by racists.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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Although mong, from the Old English gemong, meaning “mixture,” is still with us in the form of among, the word mongrel has gained an ugly, snarling connotation; for years mongrelization was a term used by racists.
No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003
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Bull-terriers, retrievers, nondescripts — the dog-lover abhors the term mongrel — sheep dogs and cattle dogs, pointers, and, most beloved of all, Irish terriers.
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There was what we call mongrel forest, tall trees and thick brush underneath.
Roy Blakely, Pathfinder Percy Keese Fitzhugh 1913
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The word mongrel, by definition, is not an offensive term.
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I am English, Irish, Portugese, Swedish, Duthch in other words a mongrel of sorts.
unknown title 2009
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I am English, Irish, Portugese, Swedish, Duthch in other words a mongrel of sorts.
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Anyone who wants to test this theory is most welcome to come over my place, jump the back fence and seize the little MF in the garden 2 doors up that belongs to some feral fracking hippy whose kid calls the mongrel bird ‘Harriet’.
Cheeseburger Gothic » The comments that don’t make it in. 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mongrel
Apparently Wordie's server is Mongrel 1.0.1.
November 18, 2007
john commented on the word mongrel
True, it is, in conjunction with Apache. How'd you figure this out? From an error message, maybe?
November 18, 2007
uselessness commented on the word mongrel
Ooohhh, secrety.
November 21, 2007
vanishedone commented on the word mongrel
I have Firefox with the Server Spy and Web Developer Toolbar extensions, both of which can check the HTTP response headers. So if I ask WDT for this page's headers I see:
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:22:39 GMT
Server: Mongrel 1.0.1
Status: 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Set-Cookie: _session_id=tucked in my tinfoil hat; path=/; expires=Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:22:38 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 4202
X-Cache: MISS from squirrel.dur.ac.uk
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from squirrel.dur.ac.uk:8080
Via: 1.0 squirrel.dur.ac.uk:8080 (squid/2.6.STABLE14-20070730)
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
200 OK
November 21, 2007
vanishedone commented on the word mongrel
Oh, I forgot to add: this is a fun page on some of the odd things that have been spotted in response headers.
http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with-http-headers
November 21, 2007
uselessness commented on the word mongrel
Oh can't I please see your session ID? ;-)
November 21, 2007
vanishedone commented on the word mongrel
Sorry, it vapourised when I last exited my browser. I've got a new one now.
November 21, 2007
vanishedone commented on the word mongrel
When did Mongrel vanish? What did this Phusion Passenger do to it?
Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8a Phusion_Passenger/1.9.1
X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 1.9.1
I hope Mongrel was sent to a good home, and not cast out to wander the streets.
September 25, 2008
amacleod03 commented on the word mongrel
1. Derogatory description of the offspring or result of miscegenation, mixed marriage, etc.; specifically a person of mixed racial heritage. 2. Derogatory term for a person of mixed descent, whose parents are of different nationalities or different social classes. 3. Derogatory term for a person of Jewish descent. 4. A person of mixed or undefined opinions; a person whose political or religious allegiance, etc., changes according to which way the wind is blowing. 5. A person of base, low, or indeterminate status. 6. A cheat or a coward. 7. Worthless. (adjective)
Unreported in the U.S. media, the slur made headlines in Britain during the runup to elections in 2005. The Labour Party leader, Peter Hain, called Conservative leader Michael Howard an “attack mongrel.�? Howard is Jewish. Labour Party MP's seemed determined to paint this as simply a variation on “attack dog politics.�? However, it is hard to believe the denials that this was an intentional slur when campaign posters had already depicted Howard as “a Shylock.�?
July 11, 2009
agustinolvera commented on the word mongrel
Eclispe by Stephenie Meyer Page 80
-"Does that answer your question mongrel?"
November 1, 2010