Other forms: mongrels
A mongrel is a dog of mixed and unrecorded breeding. A friendly mongrel, just a mongrel, mongrel puppies.
Mixed breeding tends to mean better health, because the inherited diseases concentrated by closed pedigrees get diluted — the pound dog is often the sounder animal. Crossbreed means two known breeds and mongrel means unknown. Applied to a person it is an insult.
1nounmongrelA dog of mixed and unrecorded breeding.
“We adopted a friendly mongrel from the dog shelter.”
mongrel is a dog.
From Old English gemang, a mingling, the same root as among, plus a diminutive ending.
Proto-Germanic
*mang- — mix; mixture
Old English
ġemang — mingling
Middle English
mongrel
English, today
mongrel
From Middle English mongrel, equivalent to mong + rel; from Old English ġemang (“mingling”) (whence Modern English among), from Proto-Germanic mang- (“mix; mixture”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA