Word.ws English Dictionary

bow-wows

bow-wows is the plural of bow-wow.

bow-wows is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bow-wow.

Meaning of bow-wow

Noun

bow-wow (plural bow-wows)

  1. The sound of a dog barking.
    • And a chorus of quadruped, white and brown, / Bark’d affirmative, “gone to town,” / With affable bursts of French bow-wow; / (As part of the family they knew how!)1864, Bessie Rayner Parkes, “Fontainebleau”, in Good Words, volume 5, page 224
  2. (childish, humorous) A dog.
    • Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow wow! bow wow! / Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow wow! bow wow, / I've got a little cat, / And I'm very fond of that, / But I'd rather have a bow wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.1892, Joseph Tabrar, “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow […]”, performed by Vesta Victoria, New York, N.Y.: T[homas] B. Harms & Co. […]; London: Francis, Day & Hunter, […], →OCLC, page 5

See all 5 meanings of bow-wow

Phrases with bow-wows

Questions about bow-wows

What is bow-wows the plural of?
Bow-wows is the plural of bow-wow.

Words near bow-wows in the dictionary

  1. bow-wow
  2. bow-wow theories
  3. bow-wow theory
  4. bow-wowed
  5. bow-wowing
  6. bow-wows
  7. bowab
  8. bowable
  9. bowabs
  10. Bowan Park
  11. Bowang

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bow-wows (page history and authors); bow-wow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bow-wows.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bow-wows. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.