go to the dogs
"go-to-the-dogs" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“go to the dogs” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To decline or deteriorate shockingly.
Corpus desk
Index EN-go-to-the-dogs · go to the dogs · English
go to the dogs · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | go to the dogs |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “go to the dogs” in English
Rare enough to double-check
go to the dogs is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To decline or deteriorate shockingly.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for go to the dogs, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is go to the dogs, spelled G-O- -T-O- -T-H-E- -D-O-G-S.
Definition
- 1To decline or deteriorate shockingly.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how go to the dogs appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
"[T]he merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my carcase, they have!"
Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether. He's got some twopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria—sanitary officer or something like that. I'm told he lives with an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.