Definition of "pye-dog" []

• A stray dog. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Selection – in the form of artificial selection by human breeders – can turn a pye-dog into a Pekinese, or a wild cabbage into a cauliflower, in a few centuries."
• "If we imagine the sheer quantity of difference that separates a pye-dog from a peke, which took only a few centuries of evolution, how much longer is the time that separates us from the beginning of evolution or, say, from the beginning of the mammals?"
• "Hold in your head an approximate picture of the quantity of difference between a peke and a pye-dog."