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You are here: Home / Language / Where Did the Expression “It’s a Dog Eat Dog World” Come From and What Does the Saying Mean?

Where Did the Expression “It’s a Dog Eat Dog World” Come From and What Does the Saying Mean?

February 15, 2020 by Karen Hill

In the year 43 BC, Roman scholar Marcus Tarentius Varro observed humanity and remarked that even “a dog will not eat dog.”

His point was that humans are less principled in the matter of destroying their own kind than other animals.

By the sixteenth century, the phrase became a metaphor for ruthless competition.

And during the Industrial Revolution the expression “It’s a dog-eat-dog world” became commonplace.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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