dawg

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

  • Audio (AU)

    (file)

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

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!

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.

• “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

• Gawd, gawd