dog latin
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.39 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A phrase or jargon that imitates Latin, often by translating English words (or those of other languages) into Latin by conjugating or declining them.
name
Poor-quality or erroneous Latin.
name
Alternative letter-case form of dog Latin.
Example Sentences
- "Now that walking plants were established facts, the press lost its former tepidity and bathed them in publicity. So a name had to be found for them. Already there were botanists wallowing, after their custom, in polysyllabic dog-Latin and Greek to produce variants on ambulans and pseudopodia, but what the newspapers and the public wanted was something easy on the tongue and not too heavy on the headlines for general use."
Etymology
The term Dog Latin dates back to at least the 17th century and is thought to derive from the notion of doggerel, a word meaning rough, irregular, or trivial verse. Chambers (1908) suggests that the word reflects the idea of a clumsy, bastardized form of Latin, as if produced by dogs rather than by scholars. The adjective dog in this sense was historically used to indicate something inferior or absurd, paralleling its use in expressions like dog's breakfast or doggerel. The term thus conveys the idea of a humorous or intentionally incorrect imitation of classical Latin.