Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. anything considered worthless, e.g. a badly written book, a poorly executed painting etc; also a despicable person; also as adj.

1593		G. Harvey Pierce’s Supererogation 31: His Best is but Cattes meate, and his Worst but Dogges-meate enough.
1610		Jonson Alchemist I ii: Good deeds, sir, Doctor Dogs-meat.
1690		Dryden Don Sebastian 8: His reverence bought of me the flower of all the Market; these – these are but Dog’s Meat to ’em.
1838		C. Selby Jacques Strop III ii: Oh, my precious nerves! this is a clencher. We are dog’s meat.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 37 146/1: Mr Merriman led the horse to the edge of the circle [...] ‘Here’s the dog’s meat, sir’ said the clown. ‘Dog’s meat, sirrah! It’s a hunter’.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1908		N.Y. American 11 Sept. in Fleming Unforgettable Season (1981) 216: The Patsies who look like dog meat when arrayed against other clubs seem to give us more trouble and distress [etc.].
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 164: You was a good bum, but you’re dog meat now.
1933		Hecht & Fowler Great Magoo 31: I’m a little partickiler who calls me dog-meat.
1961		R. Serling ‘Dust’ in More Stories from the Twilight Zone 137: He held out his vast, flabby arm and made a muscle. ‘You oughta feel this!’ Kock’s mouth trembled. ‘I don’t touch dog meat, Sykes.’.
1983		C. Heath A-Team 2 (1984) 130: He gradually reclaimed his cocky bravado [...] and gave his new suitemates a light round of applause, howling, ‘All right, more dog meat for the party.’.
2009		J. Joso Soothing Music for Stray Cats 84: I figured my dog-meat brain must have experienced a kind of ‘overload,’ a sort of system shutdown.

2. (S.Afr.) domestic workers, lit. cheap cuts of meat which are cooked for the servants’ meals.

[1963		B. Modisane Blame me on History (1986) 56: It was the luxury we called ‘dog’s meat’, from the stories told around the locations that kitchen girls served their boy friends dishes prepared from the rations for the dogs, which were fed more nutritiously than the children of the locations].
1980		J. Cock Maids and Madams 67: Domestic workers are also called intama yezinja, ‘dog’s meat’, by workers in other occupational roles, for it is said that employers tend to buy them inexpensive and ‘horrid’ meat. [Ibid.] 151: Another said ‘I give her what the dogs wouldn’t like’ [...] 12 per cent gave ‘servants’ meat’ daily.

3. in fig. use, a dead person, a person in serious trouble.

1828		Sussex Advertiser 14 Apr. 4/3: Let him wait till he gets at me; I shall make ‘dog’s meat’ of him yet, and do him ‘Brown’ twice over till he turns ‘jet black’.
1984		T. Wolff The Barracks Thief 37: He cocked his rifle. [...] The man froze. [...] ‘You heard me,’ Lewis said. ‘Let loose of that fence or you’re dog meat’.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 70: If they [i.e. the police] get their hands on Roski [...] I’m dogmeat.