▪ I. bow-wow, int. and n.
Also 7 bowgh-wawgh, bough-wough, 8 bough waugh.
[Imitative. Other forms are baugh, bough, baw-waw, q.v.]
1. (ˈbaʊˈwaʊ) An imitation of the barking of a dog.
| [1576: See baw-waw.] 1610 Shakes. Temp. i. ii. 382 Harke, harke, bowgh wawgh: the watch-Dogges barke. 1651 Ogilby æsop (1665) 53 Bough wough, Whose that dare break Into my master's House? 1682 Otway Venice Pres. iii. i. 35 Now, bough waugh, waugh, bough waugh (Barks like a dog). 1855 Browning Holy-Cross Day in Men & Women II. 160 Bow, wow, wow,—a bone for the dog! |
2. a. as n. The bark of a dog; also fig.
| 1785 [see barking ppl. a.1 2 b]. 1826 Galt Last of Lairds xviii. 165 It's a sore thing for a man to be frightened into his first marriage by the bow wow o' a kirk session. 1849 W. Irving Crayon Misc. 211 With a deep-mouthed bow-wow. 1854 Gilfillan Beattie's Poems Introd. 16 The deep bow-wows of Johnson's talk. |
b. attrib. (ˈbaʊwaʊ), as in bow-wow theory, applied in ridicule to the theory that human speech originated in the imitiation of animal sounds.
| 1826 Scott Jrnl. 14 Mar. (1939) I. 135 The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going. 1864 Max Müller Sc. Lang. Ser. ii. 87 The strong objection..to what I called the Bow-wow and the Pooh-pooh theories. 1883 Century Mag. XXVI. 33 Advocates of the ‘Bow-wow’ theory of the origin of language may find convincing facts among the Zuñis. |
c. quasi-adj. Dog-like, snarling, barking.
| 1785 Ld. Pembroke in Boswell Jrnl. Tour Hebrides 8 Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way. 1854 H. Miller Sch. & Schm. (1858) 344 He could recite in the ‘big bow-wow style’. |
3. transf. A dog. humorous or as nursery term. Also to go to the bow-wows: to go ‘to the dogs’. jocular colloq.
| 1785 Grose Dict. Vulgar T., Bow-wow, the childish name for a dog. a 1800 Cowper Beau's Reply (D.) Nor some reproof yourself refuse From your aggrieved bow-wow. 1839 Dickens Nich. Nick. lxiv. 617 It is all up with its handsome friend, he has gone to the demnition bow-wows. 1893 W. K. Post Harvard Stories 114 Everything was going to the bow-wows. 1917 H. A. Vachell Fishpingle xiii. 263 He was going fast to the bowwows before I went to India. 1931 R. Campbell Georgiad i. 20 All the bow-wows, poodles, tykes and curs. |
▪ II. bow-wow, v.
(baʊˈwaʊ)
[f. prec.]
intr. To bark; also fig. to snarl, growl. Hence bow-ˈwower, bow-ˈwowing.
| 1832 Marryat N. Forster i, To be snarled at, and bow-wowed at, in this manner, by those who find fault. a 1845 Hood To Hahnemann vi, Stop his bow-wow-ing. 1850 Carlyle Latter-d. Pamph. viii, To be bullied and bowowed out of your loyalty to the God of Light. |