dog's breakfast

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dog's breakfast (plural dog's breakfasts)

1. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, idiomatic) An unappealing mixture; a disorderly situation; a mess.
   • 1961 July 7, "Black Temper," Time:

     So complex was the scheme that neither blacks nor whites could say for certain who had won. "A dog′s breakfast," cried Laborite M.P. James Callaghan. "I say frankly that I do not begin to understand it."

   • 2008 May 18, David Usborne, "The Gene Genie gets an LA makeover," The Independent (UK) (retrieved 9 June 2008):

     Critics here are reserving judgement on whether ABC will do "Life in Mars" justice or make a dog′s breakfast of it.

   • 2010, Kate Jennings, Bouleversé, Trouble: Evolution of a Radical/Selected Writings 1970-2010, page 277 (Google preview):

     I′d trade one of their sublime sentences for the entire crop of sprawling, show-offy novels – dog′s breakfasts of facetiousness – that are currently the literary vogue.

• hodgepodge, pig's ear, dog's dinner

• dog's breakfast at OneLook Dictionary Search