hound
/haʊnd/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.43 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
noun
A despicable person.
noun
A houndfish.
Example Sentences
- "The hounds were baying a fox."
- "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."
- "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."
- ""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.""
- "Boy! false hound!"
- "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."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓder. Proto-Germanic *hundaz Proto-West Germanic *hund Old English hund Middle English hound English 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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: hounden, *ḱewh₁-, hownde, húnn, *hūnaz
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Religion.