Definitions

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun ownerless half-wild mongrel dog common around Asian villages especially India

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps Hindi pāhī, peasant who lives in one village and cultivates land in another.]

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Examples

  • Selection – in the form of artificial selection by human breeders – can turn a pye-dog into a Pekinese, or a wild cabbage into a cauliflower, in a few centuries.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • If we imagine the sheer quantity of difference that separates a pye-dog from a peke, which took only a few centuries of evolution, how much longer is the time that separates us from the beginning of evolution or, say, from the beginning of the mammals?

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • Hold in your head an approximate picture of the quantity of difference between a peke and a pye-dog.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • Selection – in the form of artificial selection by human breeders – can turn a pye-dog into a Pekinese, or a wild cabbage into a cauliflower, in a few centuries.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • If we imagine the sheer quantity of difference that separates a pye-dog from a peke, which took only a few centuries of evolution, how much longer is the time that separates us from the beginning of evolution or, say, from the beginning of the mammals?

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

  • Hold in your head an approximate picture of the quantity of difference between a peke and a pye-dog.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

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