doggery

English

Etymology

From dog +‎ -ery.

Noun

doggery (countable and uncountable, plural doggeries)

(countable, obsolete) A squalid tavern.
- 1846, Home Missionary, volume 19, page 125:
  There is an enemy of religion here, who […] keeps a public house, and also a "doggery." […] By his "doggery," he keeps around him a gang of ten or fifteen of the most abandoned persons, whom he employs as assistants in carrying out his nefarious schemes. When intoxicated, he is most abusive; […]
- 1829. Atwater Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien.... Page 59 in context of mixed race community at of Am. Fur Co. station at Keokuck, Iowa: "their lights on the rapids, in a dark night, were darting about, appearing and disappearing like so many fire flies; the constant roaring of the waters on the rapids, the occasional Indian yell, the lights of their fires on the shore, and the boisterous mirth of the people at the doggery, attracted my attention occasionally, while we were lying here." and at Galena in lead region p.192 "Mr Gratiot has a large lead furnace here; and there is a store of dry goods, but no doggery in the village."
(uncountable, dated) Bestial or underhand behaviour.
- 1908, The Nation, volume 4, page 379:
  "There's a lot of 'doggery' about this business," my informant added musingly.
- 1935, Frank Philpott Bacon, The Use of Spiritualism in the Drama, page 126:
  Then it is all doggery and devilry and there is no God and no mercy.
- 1961, Boys' Life, volume 51, number 11, page 13:
  They fed on oily carcasses washed down with rum, brawled away the evenings, and collapsed each night in drunken stupor. After a week of this doggery, they made the rounds again, gathering freshly laid eggs, […]
(uncountable) Dogs generally; the realm or sphere of dogs.
- 1967, Stanley Romaine Hopper, David LeRoy Miller, Interpretation: the Poetry of Meaning, page 84:
  […] we'd distinguish an "entelechial" dog, the "compleat" dog toward which all doggery variously aspires […]

References

John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary
Caleb Atwater (1831) Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien; thence to Washington City in 1829