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dog

Pronunciation: /dɒɡ/

The English word “dog” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The species Canis familiaris (sometimes designated Canis lupus familiaris), domesticated for thousands of years and of highly variable appearance because of human breeding.
  2. Any member of the family Canidae, including domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals, and their relatives (extant and extinct).
  3. A male dog, wolf, or fox, as opposed to a bitch or vixen.
  4. The meat of this animal, eaten as food.
  5. A dull, unattractive girl or woman.
  6. A man, guy, chap.
  7. Someone who overeats or eats rapidly and noisily.
  8. Someone who is cowardly, worthless, or morally reprehensible.
  9. A sexually aggressive man.
  10. Any of various mechanical devices for holding, gripping, or fastening something, particularly with a tooth-like projection.
  11. A click or pallet adapted to engage the teeth of a ratchet wheel, to restrain the back action.
  12. A metal support for logs in a fireplace.
  13. A double-ended side spike driven through a hole in the flange of a rail on a tramway.
  14. The eighteenth Lenormand card.
  15. A hot dog: a frankfurter, wiener, or similar sausage; or a sandwich made from this.
  16. An underdog.
  17. Foot; toe.
  18. (from "dog and bone") Phone or mobile phone.
  19. One of the cones used to divide up a racetrack when training horses.
  20. Something that performs poorly.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English dogge (akin to Scots dug), from Old English dogga, docga, of uncertain origin. The original meaning seems to have been a common dog, as opposed to a well-bred one, or something like 'cur', and perhaps later came to be used for stocky dogs. Possibly a pet-form diminutive with suffix -ga (compare frocga (“frog”), *picga (“pig”)), appended to a base *dog-, *doc- of…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.