dawg

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See also: DAWG

English

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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dawg (plural dawgs)

  1. Pronunciation spelling of dog.
    That dawg won't hunt.
  2. (chiefly US, slang) Dude, bud, pal, used to address a close male friend.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:friend
    Sup, dawg.
    • 2014, “0 to 100 / The Catch Up”, performed by Drake:
      All up in my phone, lookin' at pictures from the other night / She gon' be upset if she keep scrollin' to the left, dawg
    • 2017, Joseph Barnes Phillips, Big Foot ...and Tiny Little Heartstrings:
      I'm not usually on African food, but the smell of that jollof is peng right now my dawg!

Usage notes

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dawg, rather than dog, may be used for one of two reasons:

  1. To emphasise dialect. In some North American English dialects, the /ɔ/ sound is strengthened to /ɔə/, which is quite noticeable to North American English speakers who do not speak such a dialect.
  2. To distinguish (and emphasise a distinction) between "dog", the animal, and "dawg", the slang word that is a friendly term of address. Dog can be used disparagingly in English, and it carries disparaging connotations in many other languages. As such, there is often a desire to distinguish the term of address from the common noun.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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