dog-whistly

English

Alternative forms

• dogwhistly, dogwhistley, dog-whistley

Etymology

From dog whistle +‎ -y.

Adjective

dog-whistly (comparative dog-whistlier, superlative dog-whistliest)

1. (informal) Of, relating to, or characteristic of dog-whistle politics.
   • 2008 August 1, Melissa McEwan, “McCain blows the dog whistle”, in The Guardian:

     But the difference between the "bimbo ad" (which was also a Republican production) and the McCain advert is that the former was explicit in its miscegenation message, whereas the latter is more, well, dog-whistly.

   • 2018, Dana Andersen, "Letter: Dems ‘blew it’ alright", Post Independent (Glenwood Springs, CO), 20 February 2018:

     The dog-whistley Make America Great Again has given us Donald J. Trump, the great white hope, undoer of all-things-Obama.

   • 2022, Jeremiah Moss, Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York, unnumbered page:

     While there are reasons to complain about fireworks—they're loud, they can hurt people and cause fires—the tenor of the collective complaint becomes racialized and dog-whistly, spiked with cries for "law and order."

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dog-whistly.