three dog night

three-dog night

old-fashioned A bitterly cold night (i.e., so cold that one would need their dogs in bed with them to stay warm). Temperatures fell well below freezing, a true three-dog night.
See also: night
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

three dog night

A very cold night. Back in pre-central heating days, on nights when a thick quilt wasn't available or didn't provide enough heat, rural dwellers might take a dog into bed to provide additional warmth. Chilly weather called for one dog, even colder for two, but when it was cold enough to freeze a brass monkey, you'd make room for three dogs.
See also: dog, night, three
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • three-dog night
  • dead of night
  • the dead of night
  • night night
  • I was up all night with a sick friend
  • at night
  • day and night
  • a night on the tiles
  • tile
  • have a gas
References in periodicals archive
Fans of Queen, Pink Floyd and Three Dog Night understand the maxim, too; it booms out of their soundboxes through the eponymous singles those bands produced.
"One night I was singing in a London pub and when I'd finished my stint some people came over and said they liked my songs; they turned out to be the US band Three Dog Night. I hung out with them for a couple of weeks, but nothing came of it.
Accompanied by some very deliberately programmed and too obvious period music--including the unwelcome bleatings of Three Dog Night, America and the Young-bloods--Richard returns to college, where he meets Art (Sheen), a wheelchair-bound, beret-wearing verbal bomb-thrower, who is wracked by cerebral palsy but harbors a caustic wit and a hilarious gift for obscenity.
each night except Wednesday, will feature The Commodores on Monday; The Dickens on Tuesday; Three Dog Night on Thursday; and U-Neek Flavur on Friday.
It's "easy to be hard," proclaimed a 1967 song from the musical, Hair (later popularized by the pop group Three Dog Night).
The ASIS Foundation brought "Joy to the World" Wednesday night, as Three Dog Night took the stage.
Delivering on his promise to stage the most energetic convention- closing party NAA has ever had, outgoing Chairman William Dean Singleton channeled the spirit of rock impresario Bill Graham with a show that featured three Boomer faves: The Four Tops, Three Dog Night, and a "surprise" band led by former Beach Boy Al Jardine.
Feelgood, Three Dog Night, the Neville Brothers, and, perhaps most famously, Bonnie Raitt (whose version of Hiatt's "Thing Called Love" was a huge hit for her in 1989 and a major factor in her belated emergence as a mainstream pop music figure).
It Wasn't just her soulful, whisper-to-a-scream voice that inexorably drew us out (gays do adore their divas) nor her brilliant albums (including Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, Gonna Take a Miracle) nor the disarming Tin Pan Alley-meets-street-comer doo-wop compositions that were hits for other artists ("Wedding Bell Blues" and "Stoned Soul Picnic" for the Fifth Dimension, "Eli's Comin'" for Three Dog Night, "And When I Die" for Blood, Sweat & Tears, and "Stoney End" for Barbra Streisand).
YES, it was a No.3 hit for US group Three Dog Night in August 1971.
(25.) But hear Three Dog Night, One, on The Best of Three Dog Night (UNI/MCA 1983) (making the case for one).
The record, a cover of the classic Three Dog Night hit, is a duet with his namesake, Kelly Jones of The Stereophonics.
The Stereophonics hold their own on Three Dog Night's Mama Told Me Not To Come, Heather Small gives the old ham what for on Gladys Knight's You Need Love Like I Do, while Robbie Williams camps it up nicely for Are You Gonna Go My Way.
Third Eye Blind, Three Dog Night. Homer Simpson, Carol Simpson.