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- Idiom: Wag the dog Meaning: To 'wag the dog' means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance.
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What does tail wagging the dog mean?
Should a dog wag its own tail?
The answer to a riddle, “Why does a dog wag his tail?” is answered by an English nobleman, who says it is “because the dog is stronger than his tail. If he wasn’t the tail would wag the dog.”
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Wag the dog Meaning. The idiom "wag the dog" is used to describe a situation where someone or something is causing chaos or stirring up trouble in order to divert attention away from a problem or issue.
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to divert attention from something that is badto change the topic from something that is more important to something that is notto hide somethinga small part (of something) controlling the big partThe prime minister keeps wagging the dogto keep people from actually finding out about the scam and its details.I had to wag the dogso that he does not find out where I had actually gone this afternoon.She often wags the dogso that his mother does not find out about his father’s medical condition. They do not want to frighten her until things are clearer.Although Suzy has just joined the team yesterday she has been wagging the dogsince this morning and trying to tell people what to do.There is a popular saying which goes “a dog is smarter than its tail, but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would wag the dog“. The phrase in discussion is the shorter version of the same. The phrase is also the tittle of a black comedy film from 1997. Animal, Circumstances, Dog
To 'wag the dog' means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue.
wag the dog. 1. verb In politics, to orchestrate some high-profile event or action in order to distract from something negative or damaging, usually a scandal of some kind. Derived from the phrase "the tail wagging the dog" and popularized by the 1997 satirical film Wag the Dog.
Wag the dog is a political term for the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue usually through military force. It stems from the generic use of the term to mean a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). It is usually used by a politician when they are in a scandal, in hopes ...
