dog foodn.
/ˈdɒɡ fuːd/, U.S. /ˈdɔɡ ˌfud/, /ˈdɑɡ ˌfud/ 1. Food that is prepared for dogs; now esp. commercially prepared dog meat or dog biscuits. Cf. dog meat n., dog biscuit n. 1.
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the world > food and drink > food > animal food > [noun] > pet-food > dog food
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1848 ‘F. Forester’ Field Sports U.S. & Brit. Provinces Amer. II. 6 This I consider to be the perfection of dog-food, and the following is the best way of preparing it.
1907 Athenæum 3 Aug. 119 The whale-meat taken as dog-food was poisoning the animals.
1951 M. McLuhan Mech. Bride 77/1 The ultimate absurdity of this attitude gets frequent expression in those dog-food ads.
2002 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 22 Dec. 29/1 Once it was considered enough to plop a can of home-brand dog food in Fido's bowl each day.
2. Computing slang. A product or service used by the employees of the company that made it, as a means of testing it before it is made available to customers.Recorded earliest in to eat one's own dog food at Phrases 2.
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1993 Wall St. Jrnl. 26 May a1/6 Mr. Cutler insists that a new build, or test version, of NT be stitched together electronically each morning so that his programmers can, as he puts it, ‘eat their own dog food’.
1996 New Republic (Nexis) 2 Sept. Another piece of e-mail..instructed us on how to ‘access the dogfood servers’.
2013 @fearthecowboy 1 Aug. in twitter.com (accessed 25 Sept. 2020) Installed the latest dogfood of Windows 8.1 on my Dell this morning. This is MUCH better than previous builds. I'm quite impressed.
2020 github.com 21 Jan. (forum post, accessed 25 Sept. 2020) Go to Members doesn't filter properly in latest dogfood.
Phrases
P1. slang (chiefly Marketing). will the dogs eat the dog food? and variants: used to question whether consumers will accept or use a product or service. Hence to eat the dog food and variants: to accept something offered or advocated by another.
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1983 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 19 Feb. 10/1 ‘There are no limits to what we can do technically,’ Mr. Light says. ‘The real question is whether the dog will eat the dog food.’
1996 InfoWorld 4 Nov. tw3/2 Our product is very strong, but honestly we aren't sure how people will accept it—we aren't sure if the dogs will eat the dog food.
2002 BusinessWeek 21 Jan. 72/2 So it's not surprising that Microsoft is confident it will win in the home. ‘A lot of this stuff isn't a question of, “Will the dogs eat the dog food?” It's “When?”’
2008 Chicago Daily Herald (Nexis) 5 Feb. (Suburban Life & Entertainm. section) 1 Republican voters aren't going to eat that dog food. They just don't like the way it tastes.
2014 M. B. Timmons et al. Entrepreneurial Engineer iv. 96 As you go forward, you will need to document if customers will, in essence, eat your dog food.
P2. slang (chiefly Computing). to eat one's own dog food: (of a company or its staff) to use one own's product or service. Esp. in negative or conditional contexts implying that the product or service is of poor quality.
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1993 Wall St. Jrnl. 26 May a1/6 Mr. Cutler insists that a new build, or test version, of NT be stitched together electronically each morning so that his programmers can, as he puts it, ‘eat their own dog food’.
1998 InfoWorld 28 Aug. 85/3 I guess somebody at IBM doesn't want to eat their own dog food.
2004 Financial Times 13 Oct. 6/7 If BT had to eat its own dog food you can bet wholesale line rental would look quite good today.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2021; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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