Arf

Part of speech: noun, verb, interjection

Definitions

1. The sharp, loud sound that a dog makes when barking
2. A dog's sharp vocal sound produced when barking or alerting
3. The characteristic sharp noise uttered by a barking dog

Etymology: "Arf" is an interjection, an imitation of the short bark of a dog. Its use is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, which dates the entry to the early 2000s, but the word is onomatopoeic: it reproduces a sound rather than descending from an earlier word. Dogs make many sounds, and English has long had a family of such imitations, such as "woof" and "bow-wow", each shaped by the sound a speaker hears and the sounds a language allows. Because the word imitates a sound, it has no older root to trace. Its meaning is simply the noise itself, which is also why it can be used as an exclamation or as a sign of a dog's presence in comic writing and speech.

Synonyms: bark, woof