MASTIFF

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mastiff mean? 

• MASTIFF (noun)
  The noun MASTIFF has 1 sense:

1. an old breed of powerful deep-chested smooth-coated dog used chiefly as a watchdog and guard dog

  Familiarity information: MASTIFF used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MASTIFF (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An old breed of powerful deep-chested smooth-coated dog used chiefly as a watchdog and guard dog

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("mastiff" is a kind of...):

working dog (any of several breeds of usually large powerful dogs bred to work as draft animals and guard and guide dogs)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mastiff"):

Tibetan mastiff (very large powerful rough-coated dog native to central Asia)

 Context examples 

There was no hope for the mastiff from the first.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The Dogue de Bordeaux is a short, stocky mastiff with a huge, heavy, broad, wrinkled head.

(Dogue-de-Bordeaux, NCI Thesaurus)

His mastiff face was heavy with emotion, and he shook his head miserably as he spoke.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said my employer, laughing at the start which I had given. ‘It’s only Carlo, my mastiff.’

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite to its master's yard.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

These creatures were of the size of a large mastiff, but infinitely more nimble and fierce; so that if I had taken off my belt before I went to sleep, I must have infallibly been torn to pieces and devoured.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Sixty or seventy of them, large and small, smooth and shaggy—deer-hound, boar-hound, blood-hound, wolf-hound, mastiff, alaun, talbot, lurcher, terrier, spaniel—snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

‘Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over that threshold again’—here in an instant the smile hardened into a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a demon—‘I’ll throw you to the mastiff.’

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)