Doggy

How to spell doggy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce doggy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does doggy mean?

1. nounAn affectionate or childlike word for a dog, especially a small one.
2. adjectiveResembling, relating to, or smelling of a dog.

Doggy in a sentence

• noun

  The children begged to bring the little doggy home from the shelter.

• adjective

  The damp blanket gave the whole car a doggy smell.

• noun

  She carried the tiny doggy in a padded shoulder bag.

• adjective

  The sofa had a faint doggy odour after the puppy moved in.

Where does doggy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is an affectionate, informal form of 'dog', which is one of the genuine mysteries of English vocabulary. The base word appears in Old English as 'docga', recorded only rarely and seemingly as a name for a specific powerful breed, while the usual Old English word for the animal was 'hund' (the ancestor of 'hound'). For reasons that remain unexplained, 'dog' gradually pushed 'hound' aside and became the everyday term by the late Middle Ages, yet no convincing parent word has ever been found in other languages, so the origin is honestly classed as uncertain. The familiar form 'doggy' adds the diminutive ending '-y' or '-ie', the same affectionate suffix seen in 'kitty' and 'birdie', and the spelling doubles the 'g' to keep the short vowel of 'dog'. That doubled 'g' is the small spelling point to remember, since the single-g 'dogy' would tempt a long vowel reading. The word has been used as a fond or childlike name for a dog since at least the 1800s.

How the word is built

• dog (the animal)
• -gy (diminutive/affectionate suffix, with doubled g)