Word.ws English Dictionary

dog's letter

dog's letter noun: the letter R, which was trilled in Latin, imitating the sound of a snarling dog.

Noun

dog's letter

  1. (rare) The letter R, which was trilled in Latin, imitating the sound of a snarling dog.
    • R is the Dog's letter, and hurreth in the sound; the tongue striking the inner palate, with a trembling about the teeth.1640, Samuel Ramsey, The English Language and English Grammar, New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, translation of original by Ben Jonson, published 1892, page 168
    • R: SOME call this the dog's letter, upon account of its harsh and rough pronunciation;[…]1735, Thomas Dyche, New General English Dictionary […], published 1798, page 180

Origin of dog's letter

Calque of Latin littera canīna.

Questions about dog's letter

What does dog's letter mean?
Dog's letter means the letter R, which was trilled in Latin, imitating the sound of a snarling dog.
What part of speech is dog's letter?
Dog's letter is a noun.

Words near dog's letter in the dictionary

  1. dog's dinner
  2. dog's egg
  3. dog's fennel
  4. dog's fennels
  5. dog's fingers
  6. dog's letter
  7. dog's life
  8. dog's mercury
  9. dog's nose
  10. dog's sleep
  11. dog's soup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dog's letter (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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