watchdog

UK/ˈwɒt͡ʃˌdɒɡ/US/ˈwɑːt͡ʃˌdɑːɡ/

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,198 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: watchdogs

A watchdog is a body that guards against wrongdoing by others. An industry watchdog.

It has to be independent of whatever it watches, which is where most of them fail. A watchdog with no power to fine anybody is called a lapdog by everybody except the industry.

Definitions of watchdog

1nounwatchdogA body that guards against wrongdoing by others.B2
“The watchdog was funded by the very companies it inspected.”

watchdog is a body.

Where it comes from

From watch + dog.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

watchdog in the wild

Common Cause is a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., with chapters in 35 US states.
Common Cause
During normal operation, the computer regularly restarts the watchdog timer to prevent it from elapsing, or timing out.
Watchdog timer
If, due to a hardware fault or program error, the computer fails to restart the watchdog, the timer will elapse and generate a timeout signal.
Watchdog timer
A guard dog or watchdog is a dog used to watch for and guard people or property against unwanted human or animal intruders.
Guard dog

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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