pack hound

English

Alternative forms

• packhound

Noun

pack hound (plural pack hounds)

1. A dog of any breed used to assist hunters as part of a pack.

   The beagle and basset were bred as pack hounds.

   • 1838 August, “Wild Boar Hunting”, in New Sporting Magazine, volume 15, number 88, page 81:

     […] large dogs—bred between the English fox-hound and the mastiff—are occasionally used in the more northern parts of Germany, where they are called “Pack Hunde,” or pack hounds […]

   • 1887, Henry Norman, chapter 1, in Bodyke,‎^[1], New York: Putnam, page 5:

     I’m a business man, and I keep pack-hounds and I hunt over everybody’s land […] and I can’t afford to do anything that would make people […] stop my hunting,

   • 1911, William H. Davies, “The Happy Child”, in Songs of Joy and others‎^[2], London: A.C. Fifield, page 64:

     I heard the packhounds in green park—
     But no dog like the child heard bark.

   • 1962, Arthur Miller, “The Bored and the Violent”, in Herbert Gold, editor, First Person Singular: Essays for the Sixties‎^[3], New York: Dial, published 1963, page 181:

     […] few of these boys know how to fight alone, and hardly any without a knife or a gun. They are not to be equated with matadors or boxers or Hemingway heroes. They are dangerous pack hounds who will not even expose themselves singly in the outfield.

   • 1994, James Herbert, chapter 37, in The Ghosts of Sleath‎^[4], New York: HarperPrism, page 288:

     They arrived in the wide clearing where once, a long time ago, […] horsemen had assembled with pack hounds milling around their mounts’ legs […]