the.com/watchdog
A critic you can't fire, because that's literally the point.
means A person or group whose job is to monitor an institution or industry for wrongdoing and sound the alarm when something's off.
from Literal first, long before it was figurative: a watchdog was simply a dog kept to guard property and bark at intruders. By the 1800s English speakers extended the word to human guardians — committees, journalists, agencies — whose bark is scrutiny and whose bite is public exposure.
- origin
- Literally a dog kept to guard property
- irony
- Often funded by the thing it watches
- best trait
- Useless once it likes you back
- key feature
- Barks before, not after, the break-in