Said of a person who spitefully refuses to let someone else benefit from something for which he or she has no personal use

We asked our neighbor for the fence posts he had left over, but, like a dog in the manger, he threw them out rather than give them to us

Abbiamo chiesto al nostro vicino di poter utilizzare i paletti della recinzione che gli erano avanzati, ma lui ha fatto come il cane dell'ortolano e, piuttosto di darceli, ha preferito buttarli via

As Churchill put it with customary eloquence in 1937 about the Palestinians: "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right"

Nel 1937 Winston Churchill disse dei palestinesi, "non sono d'accordo che un cane nella mangiatoia abbia alcun diritto sulla mangiatoia anche se vi è stato per lungo tempo"

The phrase comes from one of Aesop's fables about a dog lying in a manger full of hay; an ox who tries to eat some hay is bitten by the dog, despite the fact that the dog itself has no use for the hay