Alpha-dog

verb, slang

verb, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To behave like an alpha dog; to behave in a crassly dominant manner, especially at the expense of another male. US, informal

    "At the left was Mr. Trump, the volatile presence who alpha-dogged a season of Republican debates. Now he grimaced, squinted, nodded, pursed his lips, sniffed, huffed and interrupted, becoming, over the night, an agitated man in a box."

Example

More examples

"At the left was Mr. Trump, the volatile presence who alpha-dogged a season of Republican debates. Now he grimaced, squinted, nodded, pursed his lips, sniffed, huffed and interrupted, becoming, over the night, an agitated man in a box."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.