Meaning & use
it's a dog's life
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Meanings
phrasefixed phraseinformal
Used to say that your life is hard, tiring, or full of boring work and little fun.
Grammar: A complete fixed sentence: it stands alone and needs no object, though you can add 'for me' or 'these days'.
Patterns
- It's a dog's life for someone
- It's a dog's life these days
I get up at five and work until dark — it's a dog's life.
It's a dog's life for teachers at the end of term, with exams to mark every night.
He came home, cooked, cleaned and fell asleep on the sofa. It's a dog's life, he thought.
phrasefixed phrasehumorous
Used jokingly about someone who is comfortable and has everything done for them.
Grammar: Said as a joke, often about a pet or a pampered person; the tone, not the grammar, shows the meaning.
Patterns
- It's a dog's life for someone
Two walks a day, a warm bed and dinner served on time — it's a dog's life for Bella.
He sleeps till noon and his mother brings him breakfast. It's a dog's life, isn't it?
Common combinations
- a dog's life
- After ten years in that factory he called it a dog's life and left.
- It's a dog's life for someone
- It's a dog's life for nurses working double shifts.
- live a dog's life
- They lived a dog's life on the road, moving from town to town.
- say It's a dog's life
- She smiled, shook her head and said, 'It's a dog's life.'
Synonyms and how they differ
- a hard life
- A plain, neutral way to describe difficulty; the idiom is more informal and often sounds like a complaint or a joke.
- a grind
- Informal for work that is boring and never ends; it names the work itself, while the idiom sums up your whole life.
Opposites
Word family
- dog noun
- The animal in the idiom; a dog's life is literally the life of a dog.
- dog-tired adjective
- Informal: extremely tired, the same idea of exhaustion behind the idiom.
- work like a dog phrase
- To work very hard for a long time, a close cousin of this idiom.
Commonly confused: it's a dog's life or a dog's dinner? it's a dog's life or dog-eat-dog?
it's a dog's life vs a dog's dinner
British informal for something done in a messy, disorganized way; it is about a bad job, not a hard life.
it's a dog's life vs dog-eat-dog
Describes a world where people compete cruelly for success; it is about other people's behavior, not your own tired life.
Practice
Which sentence uses the idiom correctly?
Choose one answer.
The idiom describes the speaker's own hard, tiring life, so 'I've been on my feet since six' fits. Option A uses it about someone else's bad luck, which sounds unsympathetic; option C describes a fun event, the opposite idea; option D makes no sense at all.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “it's a dog's life”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.