kick a dog when it's down
"kick-a-dog-when-it-s-down" is a 19-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“kick a dog when it's down” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 25
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-kick-a-dog-when-it-s-dow · kick a dog when it's down · English
kick a dog when it's down · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 25 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "K" 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 | kick a dog when it's down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 25 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “kick a dog when it's down” in English
Rare enough to double-check
kick a dog when it's down is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for kick a dog when it's down, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is kick a dog when it's down, spelled K-I-C-K- -A- -D-O-G- -W-H-E-N- -I-T-'-S- -D-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1To make things worse for someone in an adverse situation.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how kick a dog when it's down appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
but we learned for the first time last Monday night that the Atalantas would kick a dog when he's down. We were beaten ten pins; of course the At-A-lantas (as Spark puts it) will claim one hundred and ten, but the hundred were felled by Miller jumping on the alleys.
I don't like to kick a dog when he's down, and Earns has had a heap of trouble with his father's death and all
Synonyms
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.