DoggoLingo

Last updated
A dog would be called a "doggo", "pupper" or "pupperino" in DoggoLingo. Picture of a Dog, "Doggo", "Pupper".jpg
A dog would be called a "doggo", "pupper" or "pupperino" in DoggoLingo.

DoggoLingo [note 1] is an Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, [1] DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog's own idiom, and is presented as what humans have long believed goes on in the canine brain. Elyse Graham, assistant professor at Stony Brook University, describes DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way". [2]

Contents

Structure

DoggoLingo appends various diminutive suffixes "-o", "-er", "-ino" to existing English words (e.g. dog turns into doggo, [3] pup turns into pupper [4] ) as well as DoggoLingo words that have been created (e.g. pupper turns into pupperino, bork turns into borker). [1] DoggoLingo relies heavily upon onomatopoeia: Words such as blep, blop, and mlem [5] describe the action of a dog sticking out its tongue, or other forms of facial expression; bork, boof, woof describe the various canine barking sounds. A dog with a fluffy coat may be called a floof or a fluff. DoggoLingo follows a similar rudimentary style to create its verbs (e.g. doin me a in place of present participles with the speaker as object, such as doin me a scare "scaring me") and adjectives (e.g. heckin in place of degree modifiers such as extremely). 'Heck' is frequently used in place of more conventional expletives. Some words also come from eye dialect spellings of English words, such as fren "friend". [6]

Origin

DoggoLingo emerged in the 2010s, [1] but its exact origin is unknown. Various social media accounts such as WeRateDogs on Twitter and Dogspotting on Facebook, as well as social news aggregation and imageboard websites like 4chan, Reddit, or Tumblr have aided in popularizing the use of DoggoLingo by consistently using or hosting content that uses the lingo on their Internet pages. In 2014, the Dogspotting Facebook account gained popularity, especially in Australia where, coincidentally, adding "-o" to the end of words is also a feature of Australian slang. [3] Usage of DoggoLingo peaked around 2017. [1]

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch characterized the language as "taking on characteristics of how people would address their animals in the first place", and noted that it was used by people talking as themselves online, in contrast to the mid-2000s lolcat trend where images of cats were captioned as if the cat were speaking. [3]

Examples

Lingo wordBase wordMeaning
blep or mlem Onomatopoeic term for action of an animal sticking out its tongue. [7] [3]
boopThe act of lightly and gently tapping something, such as a dog's nose.[ citation needed ]
bork or boofbark/woofTerm for the verb "bark", commonly used in memes. [8]
doggodogAn affectionate term for dogs. [8]
frenfriendA word for friend, commonly used to illustrate the dog's point of view towards its owner or other dogs. [9] In 2023, an analyst from the Southern Poverty Law Center noted the term having been adopted as a deliberately "innocuous" and "baby talk" self-description by the far-right online, with the word being used as a backronym for "far-right ethnonationalist". [10]
henlohelloAn affectionate way of saying "hello". [11]
hoomanhumanAn affectionate way of addressing humans, e.g, "My hooman is my best fren!"[ citation needed ]
pupper or pupperinopuppyAn affectionate word for puppies. [8]
woofer, floofer or booferwoof/fluffA word for a very big dog, used affectionately. [8]

Other animals

Many other animals are referred to differently in DoggoLingo: for example, one might refer to a snake as a snek or danger noodle, [12] [13] a human as a hooman [14] [15] and a bird as a birb. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Onomatopoeia</span> Words that imitate the sound they describe

Onomatopoeia is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: thus as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian, dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or tik-tik in Hindi and Bengali.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shiba Inu</span> Japanese dog breed

The Shiba Inu is a breed of hunting dog from Japan. A small-to-medium breed, it is the smallest of the six original breed of dogs native to Japan. Its name literally translates to "brushwood dog", as it is used to flush game.

In linguistics, a neologism is any relatively recent and isolated term, word, or phrase that nevertheless has achieved popular or institutional recognition, and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered a neologism once it is published in a dictionary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assistance dog</span> Working dog trained to aid or assist an individual with a disability

An assistance dog, known as a service dog in the United States, is a dog trained to aid or assist an individual with a disability. Many receive training from an assistance dog organization, or by from their handler, often with the help of a professional trainer.

Cynology is the study of matters related to canines or domestic dogs. In English, it is a term sometimes used to denote a serious zoological approach to the study of dogs as well as by writers on canine subjects, dog breeders, trainers and enthusiasts who study the dog informally.

Bork may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Police dog</span> Dog trained and used for law enforcement

A police dog, also known as a K-9, is a dog that is trained to assist police and other law enforcement officers. Their duties may include searching for drugs and explosives, locating missing people, finding crime scene evidence, protecting officers and other people, and attacking suspects who flee from officers. The breeds most commonly used by law enforcement are the German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Bloodhound, Dutch Shepherd, and Labrador Retriever. In recent years, the Belgian Malinois has become the leading choice for police and military work due to their intense drive, focus, agility, and smaller size, though German Shepherds remain the breed most associated with law enforcement.

An artistic language, or artlang, is a constructed language designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Constructed languages can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a metaphor to address themes such as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalizing world. They can also be used to test linguistical theories, such as Linguistic relativity.

Woof may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Satiric misspelling</span> Deliberate misspelling for rhetorical purposes

A satiric misspelling is an intentional misspelling of a word, phrase or name for a rhetorical purpose. This can be achieved with intentional malapropism, enallage, or simply replacing a letter with another letter, or symbol. Satiric misspelling is found widely today in informal writing on the Internet, but is also made in some serious political writing that opposes the status quo.

Where My Dogs At? is an American adult animated sitcom created by Aaron Matthew Lee and Jeff Ross that premiered on MTV2 as part of its Sic'emation lineup on June 10, 2006. The show ended its run on July 29, 2006. The series centers around a beagle and a bulldog named Buddy and Woof, respectively. The two canines try to survive in the streets of Hollywood and avoid conflict with the Dog Catcher. The animation for the show was produced at 6 Point Harness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dog behavior</span> Internally coordinated responses of dogs to internal and external stimuli

Dog behavior is the internally coordinated responses of individuals or groups of domestic dogs to internal and external stimuli. It has been shaped by millennia of contact with humans and their lifestyles. As a result of this physical and social evolution, dogs have acquired the ability to understand and communicate with humans. Behavioral scientists have uncovered a wide range of social-cognitive abilities in domestic dogs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lolcat</span> Image combining a photograph of a cat with text intended to contribute humour

A lolcat, or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doge (meme)</span> Internet meme

Doge is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English. The meme most frequently uses an image of a Shiba Inu named Kabosu, though versions with other Shiba Inus are also popular.

WeRateDogs is a Twitter account that rates people's dogs with a humorous comment about the dog. The account was started in 2015 by college student Matt Nelson, and has received international media attention both for its popularity and for the attention drawn to social media copyright law when it was suspended by Twitter based on false Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints.

Pup play or puppy play is a form of fetishistic animal play where participants dress in dog costumes. It is popular in the gay community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheems</span> Hong Kong dog and Internet meme celebrity (2011–2023)

Balltze, nicknamed Cheems in online memes, was a Shiba Inu from Hong Kong. He was called Ball Ball by his owners.

References

Note

  1. also referred to as doggo, doggotalk, woof, bork, and dog-speak

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 "What Does doggo Mean?". Everything After Z by Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-04-10.
  2. "The weird underside of DoggoLingo - OxfordWords blog". OxfordWords blog. 2017-08-01. Archived from the original on 2019-04-02. Retrieved 2018-02-26.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Boddy, Jessica (April 23, 2017). "Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love For The Puppers". NPR . Retrieved October 3, 2021.
  4. "PUPPER (noun) definition and synonyms". Macmillan Dictionary. Retrieved 2020-04-10.
  5. "What Does mlem Mean?". Everything After Z by Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-04-10.
  6. Golbeck, Jennifer; Buntain, Cody (2018). "This Paper is About Lexical Propagation on Twitter. H*ckin Smart. 12/10. Would Accept!". 2018 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM). pp. 587–590. doi:10.1109/ASONAM.2018.8508445. ISBN   978-1-5386-6051-5. S2CID   53080084.
  7. "blep". Dictionary.com. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Boddy, Jessica (23 April 2017). "Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love For The Puppers". NPR. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  9. Wordsworth, Dot. "Doggo lingo". www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  10. Tangalakis-Lippert, Katherine. "Elon Musk pulled Twitter from the EU's anti-disinformation agreement and continues to troll with alt-right memes and dogwhistles. It could be a sign he'll close the site to Europe completely". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  11. Iseli, Marcel (6 October 2020). ""Henlo": Here's What It Really Means and Where It Comes From". Linguablog. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
  12. "What Does snek Mean?". Dictionary.com. 27 June 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
  13. 1 2 Elbein, Asher (December 12, 2019). "When Is a Bird a 'Birb'? An Extremely Important Guide". Audubon. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  14. Hannen, Missy (January 16, 2018). "Dogs remind us to be hooman". Vanguard. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  15. Mishra, Shubhi (June 22, 2022). "Adorable video of a doggo waiting for his little hooman at bus stop goes viral. Watch". India Today. Retrieved October 8, 2022.