Word.ws English Dictionary

bowwow

bowwow is the alternative spelling 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 bowwow

Noun
pluralbowwows
Verb
third-person singular presentbowwows
present participlebowwowing
past participlebowwowed
pastbowwowed

Phrases with bowwow

Questions about bowwow

What is bowwow the alternative spelling of?
Bowwow is the alternative spelling of bow-wow.

Words near bowwow in the dictionary

  1. bowts
  2. bowwoman
  3. bowwomen
  4. bowwood
  5. bowwoods
  6. bowwow
  7. bowwow theories
  8. bowwow theory
  9. bowwowed
  10. bowwowing
  11. bowwows

Source and license

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