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.

  • 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.
  • To make mongrel; mongrelize.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Zoöl.) Not of a pure breed.
  • adjective Of mixed kinds.
  • noun The progeny resulting from a cross between two breeds, as of domestic animals; anything of mixed breed.

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

[Middle English, probably from mong, mixture, from Old English gemang; see mag- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Late 15th century, from obsolete mong ("mixture") +‎ -rel (“(pejorative)”); from Old English gemong ("mingling") (whence Modern English among), from Proto-Germanic *mang- (“mix”).

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Examples

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Bull-terriers, retrievers, nondescripts — the dog-lover abhors the term mongrel — sheep dogs and cattle dogs, pointers, and, most beloved of all, Irish terriers.

    Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

  • There was what we call mongrel forest, tall trees and thick brush underneath.

    Roy Blakely, Pathfinder Percy Keese Fitzhugh 1913

  • The word mongrel, by definition, is not an offensive term.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • I am English, Irish, Portugese, Swedish, Duthch in other words a mongrel of sorts.

    unknown title 2009

  • I am English, Irish, Portugese, Swedish, Duthch in other words a mongrel of sorts.

    The Ukiah Daily Journal Forum 2009

  • 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

Comments

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  • Apparently Wordie's server is Mongrel 1.0.1.

    November 18, 2007

  • True, it is, in conjunction with Apache. How'd you figure this out? From an error message, maybe?

    November 18, 2007

  • Ooohhh, secrety.

    November 21, 2007

  • 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

  • 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

  • Oh can't I please see your session ID? ;-)

    November 21, 2007

  • Sorry, it vapourised when I last exited my browser. I've got a new one now.

    November 21, 2007

  • 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

  • 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

  • Eclispe by Stephenie Meyer Page 80

    -"Does that answer your question mongrel?"

    November 1, 2010