Word.ws English Dictionary

hound

/haʊnd/

hound noun: a dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.

hound: a dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals
Image: Firkingreat, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

hound (plural hounds)

  1. A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
    • The hounds were baying a fox.
  2. Any canine animal.
  3. (broadly) Someone who seeks something.
    • On the way out of the building I was asked for my autograph. If I'd known who the signature hound thought I was, I would've signed appropriately.1996, Marc Parent, Turning Stones, Harcourt Brace & Company, →ISBN, page 93
    • I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna.2004, Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper, Simon & Schuster,, →ISBN, page 483
  4. (broadly) A male who constantly seeks the company of desirable women.
    • "She had a good many successors, John."
      "You are such a hound, in that respect, Goodson," said Claywell, "and you have always been such a hound, that it astounds me to find you—unaccompanied."1915, Norman Duncan, "A Certain Recipient", in Harper's, volume 122, number 787, December 1915, republished in Harper's Monthly Magazine, volume 122, December 1915 to May 1916, page 108, "Are you...
  5. A despicable person.
    • Boy! false hound!c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • I turned away and left her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a moment or two, that I had been an unutterably mean hound.1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom Rickshaw”, in The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales, Allahabad: A.H. Wheeler and Co., page 12
    Synonyms:
    cur
  6. A houndfish.

Verb

hound (third-person singular simple present hounds, present participle hounding, simple past and past participle hounded)

  1. (transitive) To persistently harass doggedly.
    • He hounded me for weeks, but I was simply unable to pay back his loan.
    • More pertinently for the plot, another marked difference from history is that the United Kingdom of this 1982 is precociously computerised. Instead of having been hounded to death for his homosexuality, the scientist Alan Turing is thriving and lauded.2019 April 11, Marcel Theroux, “Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan review – intelligent mischief”, in The Guardian
  2. (archaic, transitive) To urge on against; to set (dogs) upon in hunting.
    • We both thought we saw what had the appearance to be a fox, and hounded the dogs at it, but they would not pursue it.1897, Andrew Lang, The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, page 162

Noun (2)

hound (plural hounds)

  1. (in plural) Projections located at the masthead or foremast, serving as a support for the trestletrees and top on which to rest; a foretop.
  2. A side bar used to strengthen portions of the running gear of a vehicle.

Proper noun capitalized: Hound

Hound

  1. A small village and civil parish in Eastleigh borough, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU4708).

hound meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

hound in Hindi

dog, hunting dog
श्वान śvān

hound in Tamil

வேட்டை நாய்

hound in Urdu

سگ تازی, شکاری کتا, تعاقب کرنا

hound in Bengali

শিকারী কুকুর
More languagesFewer languages
hound in Telugu
వేటకుక్క vēṭakukka, బేపి bēpi
hound in Malayalam
നീചൻ, വേട്ടനായ, പിന്തുടർന്ന് ഉപദ്രവിക്കുക
hound in Kannada
ಬೇಟೆನಾಯಿ, ಬಿಡದೆ ಕಾಡು, ಗೋಳಾಡಿಸು, ಅಟ್ಟಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಹೋಗು
hound in Odia
ହ୍ଯ଼ୁଣ୍ଡ କରିବା ପାଇଁ
hound in Nepali
हाउन्ड गर्न
hound in Tagalog
asong pangaso
hound in Arabic
كَلْبُ صَيْد kalbu ṣayd
hound in Malay
anjing pemburu
hound in Vietnamese
chó săn

Examples of hound in a sentence

  • The kitten cosied up to the gruff old hound, and all resistance disappeared.
  • The hounds scented the fox in the woods.
  • Anyone would crack after being hounded like that.

All 40 example sentences with hound

Synonyms of hound

10 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of hound

Forms of hound

Noun
pluralhounds
alternative formhune
Verb
third-person singular presenthounds
present participlehounding
past participlehounded
pasthounded

Plural of hound: hounds

Origin of hound

Inherited from Middle English hound, from Old English hund, from Proto-West Germanic *hund, from Proto-Germanic *hundaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓ. Doublet of canine. Cognate with Dutch hond (“dog”), German Hund (“dog”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish hund (“dog”), Faroese and Icelandic hundur (“dog”). In 14th-century England, hound was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype resembling the modern mastiff and bulldog (much as the distinction between Hund and Dogge in contemporary German). By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to breeds used for hunting.

From Middle English hounden, from the noun (see above).

From Middle English hownde, hount, houn, probably from Old Norse húnn, from Proto-Germanic *hūnaz.

Words formed from hound

Phrases with hound

12 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with hound

45 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hound

What does hound mean?
Hound means a dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
What is hound in Hindi?
Hound in Hindi is श्वान (śvān). See Hound meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is hound?
Hound can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hound?
Hound is pronounced /haʊnd/.
What is the plural of hound?
The plural of hound is hounds.

Words near hound in the dictionary

  1. houmongi
  2. houmous
  3. houmus
  4. houn'
  5. houn's
  6. hound
  7. hound dog
  8. hound dogs
  9. hound down
  10. hound of hell
  11. Hound of the Baskervilles effect

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hound (page history and authors); Hound (page history and authors); hound (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hound (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hound (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); బేపి (Telugu) (page history and authors); hound (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hound (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hound (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hound (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hound.ogg.

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