Dictionary

spaniel

Pronunciation

IPA: /ˈspænjəl/

Noun

spaniel (plural spaniels)

Any of various small to medium-sized breeds of gun dog having a broad muzzle, long, wavy fur and long ears that hang at the side of the head, bred for flushing and retrieving game.
A cringing, fawning person.
- 1595: Shakespeare, William, The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act IV, Scene II
  Proteus: Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,/The more it grows and fawneth on her still.

Translations

French: épagneul
German: Spaniel
Italian: spaniel
Portuguese: spaniel
Russian: спание́ль
Spanish: perro de aguas

Verb

spaniel (spaniels, present participle spanielling; past and past participle spanielled)

To follow loyally or obsequiously, like a spaniel.
- 1606: Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
  Antony: Do we shake hands.—All come to this!—The hearts / That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave / Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
- J. Sedgewick (1840) Timon, but not of Athens, page 200: “Always spanielling at the heels of power, the mitred Dignitaries displayed, from first to last, the most rancorous hostility against her.”
- David S. Bell (2000) Presidential Power in Fifth Republic France, →ISBN, page 30: “Hence Duverger's famous question about de Gaulle's first spanielling Prime Minister makes political ('M. Debré, existe-t-il?'), but not constitutional sense.”
- Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (2003) The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, →ISBN, page 65:
  The genre which differed from the world in order to advocate a better one - or the genre which spanielled at heel the sensationalist virtual reality world we will now arguably inhabit till the planet dies - had become by 2000, in triumpth or defeat or both, an institution for the telling of story.

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