1
: an individual resulting from the interbreeding of diverse breeds (see breed entry 2 sense 1) or strains (see strain entry 1 sense 1)
especially
: one of unknown ancestry
She owns several dogs, one of which is a mongrel.
2
: a cross between types of persons or things
the cinema is … a mongrel of virtually all the other arts—
Gerald Mast
Gerald Mast
mongrel
adjective
Examples of mongrel in a Sentence
She owns several dogs, including a mongrel named Stella.
mongrels often suffer fewer health problems than purebreds
Recent Examples on the Web
The only other research dog breeder according to current USDA inventories is Oak Hill Genetics based in Franklin County in Illinois, which housed about 800 mongrel hound dogs in July.
—Bymeredith Wadman, science.org, 28 Oct. 2024
Herzog has chosen to retain one of Ibsen’s thorniest speeches, a diatribe about social evolution in which Stockmann talks of the difference between mongrel dogs and pedigree breeds as an analogy for the uneducated masses and the elite intelligentsia.
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
To continue playing the songs without that mongrel soul is just cash register stuff.
—Matt Thompson, SPIN, 9 Jan. 2024
And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag.
—Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times, 4 Dec. 2023
See all Example Sentences for mongrel 
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Bymeredith Wadman, science.org, 28 Oct. 2024
Herzog has chosen to retain one of Ibsen’s thorniest speeches, a diatribe about social evolution in which Stockmann talks of the difference between mongrel dogs and pedigree breeds as an analogy for the uneducated masses and the elite intelligentsia.
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
To continue playing the songs without that mongrel soul is just cash register stuff.
—Matt Thompson, SPIN, 9 Jan. 2024
And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag.
—Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times, 4 Dec. 2023
See all Example Sentences for mongrel
Dictionary Entries Near mongrel
Cite this Entry
“Mongrel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mongrel. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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