Definition of "dog-eat-dog" [dog-eat-dog]

• Ruthlessly acquisitive or competitive: a dog-eat-dog society. (adjective)

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.

• "Behold Cooper, the five-year-old American Shorthair photographer-puss of Seattle who's single-paw-edly proving that it is, indeed, possible for a cool cat to rise to the top in the dog-eat-dog art world."
• "Despite warnings by prescient Republican presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, the American system has morphed quite predictably into a dog-eat-dog economic Darwinism, and the big canines have rigged the game in their favor."
• "Given the prevailing business model of copyright/royalties, and the war chests that publishers pride themselves in accumulating in the dog-eat-dog world of publish-to-parish marketing, one can see why this product had no place: no one benefits from it except Catholic people and the Catholic liturgy generally."