Bow-wow
adj, intj, noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The sound of a dog barking.
"And a chorus of quadruped, white and brown, / Bark’d affirmative, “gone to town,” / With affable bursts of French bow-wow; / (As part of the family they knew how!)"
- 2 informal terms for dogs wordnet
- 3 A dog. childish, humorous
"1902, Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt dated 13 October, 1902, in Joseph Bucklin Bishop (editor), Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children, New York: Scribner, 1919, p. 36, Gem is really a very nice small bow-wow, but Mother found that in this case possession was less attractive than pursuit."
- 4 the bark of a dog wordnet
- 1 To make the sound of a dog, to bark, to bow-wow
- 1 Grandiose. dated, informal, not-comparable
"Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry, and some truth, that “Dr. Johnson’s sayings would not appear so extraordinary were it not for his bow-wow way;” but I admit the truth of this only on some occasions."
- 1 Representing the sound of a dog barking.
"Harke, harke, bowgh wawgh: the watch-Dogges barke, bowgh-wawgh."
Example
More examples"Harke, harke, bowgh wawgh: the watch-Dogges barke, bowgh-wawgh."
Etymology
Onomatopoeic.
Related phrases
More for "bow-wow"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.