Word.ws English Dictionary

bow wow

bow wow is the alternative form 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

Forms of bow wow

pluralbow wows

Questions about bow wow

What is bow wow the alternative form of?
Bow wow is the alternative form of bow-wow.

Words near bow wow in the dictionary

  1. bow up
  2. bow wave
  3. bow waves
  4. bow window
  5. bow windows
  6. bow wow
  7. bow wows
  8. bow'd
  9. Bow's notation
  10. bow-chica-wow-wow
  11. bow-chick-a-wow-wow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bow wow (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 wow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bow_wow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.