dawg

See also: DAWG

English

Pronunciation

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

  • Audio (General Australian):

    (file)

• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /dɑɡ/
• 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 January 13, Tom Kauffman, “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” (11:23 from the start), in Rick and Morty‎^[1], season 1, episode 4, spoken by Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland):

     “Wow. What do you know? Huh. That was easy.” “Totes malotes, dawg.” “Just kind of hard to believe, you know?” “Believe it, Morty. And once again, I'm flying away with everything I can carry, and the Zigerions got nothing of mine.”

   • 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!

   • 2019 December 8, K. M. Bishop, Fake It For Me, K. M. Bishop:

     “Totes malotes, dawg,” Abby shot me with a finger-gun. “And trust me, I'm amazing at it, just like everything else. So, order the pizza, Sandy, and let's get this show on the road. This is going to be f-u-u-u-u-u-u-n.”

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

• homedawg
• 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.
• (cot–caught merger)

Anagrams

• Gawd, gawd