Is "watchdog" a bad word? - 2015 03 05 I am reading a news from BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31744010 There is a sentence saying that "Government watchdogs and former officials from the National Archives and Records Administration told the newspaper that Mrs Clinton's use of private email alone, without any government account, was a serious breach." I wonder whether "watchdog" is a bad word. Usually vocabularies related to dog are pejorative terms in Chinese. But from my dictionary, watchdog means a person or committee whose job is to make sure that companies do not act illegally or irresponsibly. It doesn't sound bad.