Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 16. The Adjective Phrase
today is dog-eat-dog. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If something is
dog-eat-dog, it means that it is a ruthless competition. So some competition, it
could be sports competition, it could be business competition, it could be
competition in politics. But it's usually some sort of competition between you
know, individuals or groups of people. We mean that someone is willing to do
almost anything to succeed even if it hurts or harms others. Okay.
The phrase alludes to the idea that the fierce struggle and competition between
people could turn them into animals. So people may start acting like
animals. So that's what the idea of dog-eat-dog is. When we say that it's a
dog-eat-dog world, a lot of times we use world with dog-eat-dog but it could use
other nouns too, it suggests that the idea ... it's just the idea that either you
eat others or you get eaten. So it's like you have no choice. Even if you don't
want to. If you don't eat them they're going to eat you. So it's a dog-eat-dog
world or a dog-eat-dog situation. Okay. You know, eat others you get .... relating to
Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest. So that's kind of where the idea of this
phrase comes from. All right. Let's look at a couple of examples we have here.
Example number one. Somebody might say, are you sure you really want to go into
politics ? Maybe this is a young person they say they want to get in to politics
and maybe this is a person that knows a lot about people that are in politics.
It's a dog-eat-dog world, in Washington. Many people in politics play dirty in
order to survive and you may find yourself in the same position. So if you
go there you, they'll ...either you may become corrupted or maybe you'll just not
succeed. That's what they mean by that. All right.
Number two. Number two has both an A and a B part. It's hard to believe that
the Olympic skater Tonya Harding. Yeah. This is all the way back in 1994. Tonya,
this was a famous story made all the main news the Tonya Harding had her
ex-husband hire an attacker to hit the other American skater Nancy Kerrigan in
the leg. Yeah. I don't know if it was ever officially established that that
Tonya Harding you know, was involved in it. Because if she was involved in it,
really she should have been disqualified and she did go on to the Olympics. But I
do remember that she had to appear in court about this. And yeah they hit Nancy
Kerrigan in the leg. I don't know. So she could be more in the spotlight. I
don't know maybe. Tonya Harding wanted to be the only main Olympian or maybe she
thought Nancy Kerrigan was her competition. If she was number one maybe
she could make more money get more sponsors or whatever. But she was willing
to go this far. You know, she might have been involved in this. So all right. Let's
continue. They were both ... yeah. So here they want
to say they were both American you would think they should be like cheering for
each other or rooting for each other. That you know they would want each other
to do well. You know it should be for the country sort of idea. And then of course
B says well what can you say, it's a dog-eat-dog competition or it's a
dog-eat-dog world. That's the way they would probably refer to something like
that. Anyway, I hope you got it . I hope it's clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.