dawg

See also: DAWG

English

Pronunciation

• (US, UK, General Australian) enPR: dôg, IPA^(key): /dɔːɡ/

  • Audio (AU)

    (file)

• (US, Canada, cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /dɑːɡ/
• Rhymes: -ɔːɡ

Noun

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

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

• road dawg

 

Translations

slang: dude, bud, pal

• Finnish: (slang) jäbä (fi)
• French: mec (fr) m (slang)
• Macedonian: бра́тче n (brátče), брат (mk) m (brat), ба́тка m (bátka)
• Portuguese: bicho (pt) (slang), mano (pt) (slang)
• Russian: чува́к (ru) m (čuvák) (slang), ко́реш (ru) m (kóreš), брата́н (ru) m (bratán)

Further reading

• “dawg”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “dawg”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• Wikipedia article on the cot–caught merger in various English dialects

Anagrams

• Gawd, gawd