Word.ws English Dictionary

sun-dog

sun-dog is the alternative form of sun dog.

Meaning of sun dog

Noun

sun dog (plural sun dogs)

  1. A bright spot in the sky, usually one of two on a parhelic circle on both sides of the sun (or occasionally above and below it), caused by the refraction of the sun's image through ice crystals.
    • December […] the 28th [1714], the Sun being an Hour high, appeared a Sun-Dog or Parhelion, the Sky full of flying Clouds.1749, Thomas Short, A General Chronological History of the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors, &c. […], volume I, London: […] T[homas] Longman, […]; and A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, page 474
    Synonyms:
    mock sun, parhelion

Forms of sun-dog

pluralsun-dogs

Questions about sun-dog

What is sun-dog the alternative form of?
Sun-dog is the alternative form of sun dog.

Words near sun-dog in the dictionary

  1. sun-burners
  2. sun-chaser
  3. sun-chasers
  4. sun-dappled
  5. sun-darts
  6. sun-dog
  7. sun-dogs
  8. sun-drenched
  9. sun-dried
  10. sun-dries
  11. sun-dry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sun-dog (page history and authors); sun dog (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.

Last updated:

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