![]() "Blaff," "baff," "buff," "nyaff," "yaff," "yaffle," and even "waffle" have all been used to describe barks, not to mention "woof"-the valedictorian of dog words (except for maybe "bow-wow," first found in the 1500s and sometimes spelled "bowgh-wawgh," "bough-wough," and "baw-waw"). "If "r" is the dog's letter, "f" must be the runner-up. to snarl as a dog to complain persistently to be fretful or peevish.” Appropriately enough, "r" is known as the "dog's letter," a term anticipated by this quote from Romeo and Juliet: "Doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter?. ""Arf" is not far sound-wise from a bunch of terms meaning canine growling and/or snarling, such as the onomatopoeic "grrrr" and the now-obscure "yar" (1300s), "hurr" (1636), "harr" (1387), "narr" (1509), "gnar" (1496), and the piratical "arr" (1483).Īnother grrr-y word is "girn": a variation of "grin" that also means "To show the teeth in rage, pain, disappointment, etc. Sandy, Little Orphan Annie's ‘canine companion', wasn't the first cartoon dog to utter an arf, but his was the bark heard around the world (or at least read across America, in Harold Gray's widely syndicated cartoon). ![]() both senses of arf were popularized by their associations with irrepressible icons of American comic strips: Little Orphan Annie and Popeye the Sailor. ![]() In a note on the OED update, Managing Editor Michael Proffitt noted a cartoony common denominator: ". Arf, arf, arf!”Since the early thirties, "arf arf" has done double duty, as it also imperfectly represents laughter. What follows are some facts from the Oxford English Dictionary-the Bible of the English language, though with fewer lepers and smitings-on the history of our attempts to speak for and about dogs.The Oxford English Dictionary's latest update included a long overdue entry for "arf," which is first recorded in a 1918 cartoon caption: "I'll be leader for a game of foller the leader. ![]() It's not-so-well-known that there's been just as much variation within English when it comes to reporting the yip-yaps and bow-wows of our pooches and pals. ![]()
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