pack hound
English
Alternative forms
- packhound
Noun
pack hound (plural pack hounds)
- A dog of any breed used to assist hunters as part of a pack.
- The beagle and basset were bred as pack hounds.
- 1838, “Wild Boar Hunting” in New Sporting Magazine, Volume 15, No. 88, August, 1838, p. 81,
- […] large dogs—bred between the English fox-hound and the mastiff—are occasionally used in the more northern parts of Germany, where they are called “Pack Hunde,” or pack hounds […]
- 1887, Henry Norman, Bodyke, New York: Putnam, Chapter 1, p. 5,
- I’m a business man, and I keep pack-hounds and I hunt over everybody’s land […] and I can’t afford to do anything that would make people […] stop my hunting,
- 1911, William H. Davies, “The Happy Child” in Songs of Joy and others, London: A.C. Fifield, p. 64,
- I heard the packhounds in green park—
- But no dog like the child heard bark.
- 1962, Arthur Miller, “The Bored and the Violent” in Herbert Gold (ed.), First Person Singular: Essays for the Sixties, New York: Dial, 1963, p. 181,
- […] few of these boys know how to fight alone, and hardly any without a knife or a gun. They are not to be equated with matadors or boxers or Hemingway heroes. They are dangerous pack hounds who will not even expose themselves singly in the outfield.
- 1994, James Herbert, The Ghosts of Sleath, New York: HarperPrism, Chapter 37, p. 288,
- They arrived in the wide clearing where once, a long time ago, […] horsemen had assembled with pack hounds milling around their mounts’ legs […]