a dog's life
A life that is difficult, unpleasant, or boring. You whipper-snappers think you've got a bright future ahead of you, but it's a dog's life, I tell you!
dog's life
A miserably unhappy existence, as in He's been leading a dog's life since his wife left him. This expression was first recorded in a 16th-century manuscript and alludes to the miserable subservient existence of dogs during this era. By the 1660s there was a proverb: "It's a dog's life, hunger and ease."
a dog's life
an unhappy existence full of problems or unfair treatment. 1987 Fannie Flagg Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe The judge's daughter had just died a couple of weeks ago, old before her time and living a dog's life on the outskirts of town.
a ˈdog’s life
(informal) a life in which there is not much pleasure or freedom: It’s a dog’s life having to do two jobs in order to survive.a dog's life
Miserable circumstances. The term has been traced to Erasmus, who pointed out the wretched subservient existence of dogs in the mid-sixteenth century, as well as to the seventeenth-century proverb, “It’s a dog’s life, hunger and ease.” It was certainly a cliché by the time Rudyard Kipling (A Diversity of Creatures, 1899) wrote, “Politics are not my concern. . . . They impressed me as a dog’s life without a dog’s decencies.” See also die like a dog.