You can call a friend of yours “dog” in the same way that you can call them “dude”, “bro”, or “man”. When you say it in the same contexts as you would use those words, it isn’t a negative thing. It’s simply a different way to address your buddies! You sometimes see it written as “dawg”. Some people choose to say “doggy” as well.
A similar example, this time from real life, comes from the TV show American Idol. A judge on the show, Randy Jackson, became notorious for calling the contestants “dawg”. Here’s a short clip from an interview he did with Oprah where he explains this term:
So let’s look at the slang usage for the word “dog” in English and discover the different ways it can be used.
In the popular 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, during one of the opening scenes, a character in the game named Big Smoke refers to the main character Carl Johnson as his dog. Check it out below:
You can see this usage in media or various forms from video games to TV shows.
noun
What does Big Dog mean in slang?
A slang term for an important person. For example, a major shareholder in a corporation may be said to be a big dog.
English[edit]
dawg (plural dawgs)
- That dawg wont hunt.
- 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
- Im 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:
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