Doggo Speak

2014Internet slang / constructed internet dialectclassic

Also known as: DoggoLingo · Doggolingo

Doggo Speak is a 2014 pet-community internet dialect using cute word suffixes and broken grammar to mimic dogs' inner thoughts, built on circular jokes like "a pupper is a small doggo and a doggo is a big ol pupper.

Doggo Speak is an internet dialect designed to sound like a dog's inner monologue, built from cute word suffixes, animal onomatopoeia, and deliberately broken grammar. The language grew out of pet-enthusiast communities on Facebook and Reddit in the mid-2010s, peaked around 2017 when Merriam-Webster flagged "doggo" as a word to watch, and spawned a full vocabulary covering dozens of animal species. Its central joke, a circular definition where a pupper is "a small doggo" and a doggo is "a big ol pupper," became one of the most recognizable bits of mid-2010s internet humor.

doggolingo memescopypasta memesmisspelling memesdogsdictionary entry memes

TL;DR

Doggo Speak is an internet dialect designed to sound like a dog's inner monologue, built from cute word suffixes, animal onomatopoeia, and deliberately broken grammar.

Overview

Doggo Speak treats dogs as if they could type, imagining canine thoughts in a babytalk register full of invented words and intentionally wobbly grammar3. The vocabulary follows consistent linguistic patterns: nouns take diminutive suffixes like "-o," "-er," and "-ino" (dog becomes doggo, pup becomes pupper, pupper becomes pupperino), verbs use a formulaic "doin me a [noun]" construction, and the word "heckin" works as a universal intensifier replacing "very" or "extremely"1. Eye dialect spellings like "fren" (friend) and "hooman" (human) round out the lexicon1.

Onomatopoeia covers specific dog behaviors. "Bork" stands in for barking, "mlem" describes licking, "blep" refers to a tongue slightly poking out, and "blop" handles droopier facial expressions3. The dialect's most famous bit is its self-referential definition loop: a pupper is "a small doggo" and a doggo is "a big ol pupper"3.

The language took shape across multiple pet-focused internet communities in the early-to-mid 2010s, with no single creator. The Dogspotting Facebook group served as an early incubator, particularly in Australia where adding "-o" to everyday words (arvo, servo, smoko) is already common slang1. On May 22, 2014, the Ding de la Doggo Facebook page launched, sharing dog memes built around the word "doggo" and attracting over 29,000 likes in three years2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (Dogspotting, Ding de la Doggo), Reddit (r/me_irl, r/doggos)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2014
Year
2014

The language took shape across multiple pet-focused internet communities in the early-to-mid 2010s, with no single creator. The Dogspotting Facebook group served as an early incubator, particularly in Australia where adding "-o" to everyday words (arvo, servo, smoko) is already common slang. On May 22, 2014, the Ding de la Doggo Facebook page launched, sharing dog memes built around the word "doggo" and attracting over 29,000 likes in three years.

How It Spread

The /r/doggos subreddit launched on June 6, 2015, giving the vocabulary a dedicated home on Reddit. Weeks later on July 21, a chart titled "What are aninmals?" was posted to /r/meirl, labeling a Shiba Inu as a "common doggo" and a Fennec fox as a "special doggo," and the post pulled in over 2,400 upvotes.

By June 2016, the circular pupper/doggo definition had its own Urban Dictionary entry, with user VictorLictor formally defining doggo as "a big ol pupper". The phrase was already spreading as a copypasta on Reddit, with users tracing its origins back to /r/me_irl. On July 16, 2016, a post to /r/me_irl featuring a blue "Doggo" button scored over 8,400 upvotes.

The mainstream recognition moment landed on December 27, 2017, when Merriam-Webster placed "doggo" on its "words we're watching" list. The dictionary tracked the history of the older English phrase "lie doggo" (meaning to stay motionless) while crediting the WeRateDogs Twitter account as a major driver behind the word's new life as pet slang. After tweeting about the inclusion, Merriam-Webster's replies flooded with users sharing photos of their dogs.

How to Use This Meme

Doggo Speak follows loose conventions that most people pick up by exposure:

Word conversion: Add "-o" for standard animal nouns (dog → doggo, cat → catto), "-er" for smaller versions (pup → pupper), or "-ino" for extra diminutive emphasis (pupper → pupperino).

Sounds: Match behaviors to onomatopoeia. "Bork" for barking, "mlem" for licking, "blep" for a tongue slightly sticking out.

Verbs: Use "doin me a [noun]" to describe actions. A startling event is "doin me a frighten." An extremely cute dog is "doin me a heckin concern" for the heart.

Intensifiers: "Heckin" replaces "very" or "really." "Heck" stands in for stronger profanity.

Spelling swaps: "Friend" becomes "fren," "human" becomes "hooman," "small" becomes "smol."

The format isn't limited to dogs. People commonly apply Doggo Speak rules to cats, birds ("birbs"), snakes ("sneks"), and other animals.

Cultural Impact

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch drew a sharp distinction between Doggo Speak and its mid-2000s predecessor, lolcat language. Where lolcats captioned images as if the cat itself were speaking, Doggo Speak mirrored how people actually address their pets, then carried that baby-talk register into online conversation. Elyse Graham, a professor at Stony Brook University, described DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way".

The dialect stood apart from most internet slang trends of the same era, which leaned ironic or nihilistic. Doggo Speak was almost aggressively wholesome, and that sincerity was part of the appeal.

Not all Doggo Speak vocabulary stayed innocent. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that the term "fren," originally baby-talk for "friend," had been co-opted by far-right communities online as a deliberately innocuous self-description, even reinterpreted as a backronym for "far-right ethnonationalist".

Fun Facts

The /r/meirl "What are aninmals?" chart that helped spread the term was intentionally misspelled, fitting the deliberately imprecise spirit of the whole dialect.

Adding "-o" to words is already standard practice in Australian English (arvo for afternoon, servo for service station), which may explain why Doggo Speak caught on early in Australian internet communities.

Usage of DoggoLingo peaked around 2017, the same year Merriam-Webster took notice.

The dialect's verb structure ("doin me a frighten") resembles creole language formation, building verbs from a simple repeatable formula rather than conjugation.

Derivatives & Variations

Animal variants:

The vocabulary expanded to cover snakes ("snek," "nope rope," "danger noodle"), birds ("birb"), fat birds ("borb"), and fluffy animals ("floof")[1].

WeRateDogs:

The Twitter account (@dog\_rates) became one of the most visible ongoing practitioners, rating dogs above 10/10 and using Doggo Speak vocabulary throughout its posts[2].

Pupper/Doggo copypasta:

The circular definition spawned its own standalone copypasta, including a parody styled after the infamous Unidan "Here's the thing" rant, posted to /r/copypasta in July 2016[2].

Undertale's Doggo:

The 2015 RPG Undertale featured an anthropomorphic boss character named Doggo, coinciding with the term's rise in internet slang[2].

Frequently Asked Questions

References (3)

  1. 1
    Doggo Speak - Know Your Memeencyclopedia
  2. 2
    DoggoLingoencyclopedia
  3. 3
    Doggo Speak - Urban Dictionarydictionary

Doggo Speak

2014Internet slang / constructed internet dialectclassic

Also known as: DoggoLingo · Doggolingo

Doggo Speak is a 2014 pet-community internet dialect using cute word suffixes and broken grammar to mimic dogs' inner thoughts, built on circular jokes like "a pupper is a small doggo and a doggo is a big ol pupper.

Doggo Speak is an internet dialect designed to sound like a dog's inner monologue, built from cute word suffixes, animal onomatopoeia, and deliberately broken grammar. The language grew out of pet-enthusiast communities on Facebook and Reddit in the mid-2010s, peaked around 2017 when Merriam-Webster flagged "doggo" as a word to watch, and spawned a full vocabulary covering dozens of animal species. Its central joke, a circular definition where a pupper is "a small doggo" and a doggo is "a big ol pupper," became one of the most recognizable bits of mid-2010s internet humor.

doggolingo memes copypasta memes misspelling memes dogs dictionary entry memes

TL;DR

Doggo Speak is an internet dialect designed to sound like a dog's inner monologue, built from cute word suffixes, animal onomatopoeia, and deliberately broken grammar.

Overview

Doggo Speak treats dogs as if they could type, imagining canine thoughts in a babytalk register full of invented words and intentionally wobbly grammar. The vocabulary follows consistent linguistic patterns: nouns take diminutive suffixes like "-o," "-er," and "-ino" (dog becomes doggo, pup becomes pupper, pupper becomes pupperino), verbs use a formulaic "doin me a [noun]" construction, and the word "heckin" works as a universal intensifier replacing "very" or "extremely". Eye dialect spellings like "fren" (friend) and "hooman" (human) round out the lexicon.

Onomatopoeia covers specific dog behaviors. "Bork" stands in for barking, "mlem" describes licking, "blep" refers to a tongue slightly poking out, and "blop" handles droopier facial expressions. The dialect's most famous bit is its self-referential definition loop: a pupper is "a small doggo" and a doggo is "a big ol pupper".

The language took shape across multiple pet-focused internet communities in the early-to-mid 2010s, with no single creator. The Dogspotting Facebook group served as an early incubator, particularly in Australia where adding "-o" to everyday words (arvo, servo, smoko) is already common slang. On May 22, 2014, the Ding de la Doggo Facebook page launched, sharing dog memes built around the word "doggo" and attracting over 29,000 likes in three years.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (Dogspotting, Ding de la Doggo), Reddit (r/me_irl, r/doggos)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2014
Year
2014

The language took shape across multiple pet-focused internet communities in the early-to-mid 2010s, with no single creator. The Dogspotting Facebook group served as an early incubator, particularly in Australia where adding "-o" to everyday words (arvo, servo, smoko) is already common slang. On May 22, 2014, the Ding de la Doggo Facebook page launched, sharing dog memes built around the word "doggo" and attracting over 29,000 likes in three years.

How It Spread

The /r/doggos subreddit launched on June 6, 2015, giving the vocabulary a dedicated home on Reddit. Weeks later on July 21, a chart titled "What are aninmals?" was posted to /r/meirl, labeling a Shiba Inu as a "common doggo" and a Fennec fox as a "special doggo," and the post pulled in over 2,400 upvotes.

By June 2016, the circular pupper/doggo definition had its own Urban Dictionary entry, with user VictorLictor formally defining doggo as "a big ol pupper". The phrase was already spreading as a copypasta on Reddit, with users tracing its origins back to /r/me_irl. On July 16, 2016, a post to /r/me_irl featuring a blue "Doggo" button scored over 8,400 upvotes.

The mainstream recognition moment landed on December 27, 2017, when Merriam-Webster placed "doggo" on its "words we're watching" list. The dictionary tracked the history of the older English phrase "lie doggo" (meaning to stay motionless) while crediting the WeRateDogs Twitter account as a major driver behind the word's new life as pet slang. After tweeting about the inclusion, Merriam-Webster's replies flooded with users sharing photos of their dogs.

How to Use This Meme

Doggo Speak follows loose conventions that most people pick up by exposure:

Word conversion: Add "-o" for standard animal nouns (dog → doggo, cat → catto), "-er" for smaller versions (pup → pupper), or "-ino" for extra diminutive emphasis (pupper → pupperino).

Sounds: Match behaviors to onomatopoeia. "Bork" for barking, "mlem" for licking, "blep" for a tongue slightly sticking out.

Verbs: Use "doin me a [noun]" to describe actions. A startling event is "doin me a frighten." An extremely cute dog is "doin me a heckin concern" for the heart.

Intensifiers: "Heckin" replaces "very" or "really." "Heck" stands in for stronger profanity.

Spelling swaps: "Friend" becomes "fren," "human" becomes "hooman," "small" becomes "smol."

The format isn't limited to dogs. People commonly apply Doggo Speak rules to cats, birds ("birbs"), snakes ("sneks"), and other animals.

Cultural Impact

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch drew a sharp distinction between Doggo Speak and its mid-2000s predecessor, lolcat language. Where lolcats captioned images as if the cat itself were speaking, Doggo Speak mirrored how people actually address their pets, then carried that baby-talk register into online conversation. Elyse Graham, a professor at Stony Brook University, described DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way".

The dialect stood apart from most internet slang trends of the same era, which leaned ironic or nihilistic. Doggo Speak was almost aggressively wholesome, and that sincerity was part of the appeal.

Not all Doggo Speak vocabulary stayed innocent. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that the term "fren," originally baby-talk for "friend," had been co-opted by far-right communities online as a deliberately innocuous self-description, even reinterpreted as a backronym for "far-right ethnonationalist".

Fun Facts

The /r/meirl "What are aninmals?" chart that helped spread the term was intentionally misspelled, fitting the deliberately imprecise spirit of the whole dialect.

Adding "-o" to words is already standard practice in Australian English (arvo for afternoon, servo for service station), which may explain why Doggo Speak caught on early in Australian internet communities.

Usage of DoggoLingo peaked around 2017, the same year Merriam-Webster took notice.

The dialect's verb structure ("doin me a frighten") resembles creole language formation, building verbs from a simple repeatable formula rather than conjugation.

Derivatives & Variations

Animal variants:

The vocabulary expanded to cover snakes ("snek," "nope rope," "danger noodle"), birds ("birb"), fat birds ("borb"), and fluffy animals ("floof")[1].

WeRateDogs:

The Twitter account (@dog\_rates) became one of the most visible ongoing practitioners, rating dogs above 10/10 and using Doggo Speak vocabulary throughout its posts[2].

Pupper/Doggo copypasta:

The circular definition spawned its own standalone copypasta, including a parody styled after the infamous Unidan "Here's the thing" rant, posted to /r/copypasta in July 2016[2].

Undertale's Doggo:

The 2015 RPG Undertale featured an anthropomorphic boss character named Doggo, coinciding with the term's rise in internet slang[2].

Frequently Asked Questions

References (3)

  1. 1
    Doggo Speak - Know Your Memeencyclopedia
  2. 2
    DoggoLingoencyclopedia
  3. 3
    Doggo Speak - Urban Dictionarydictionary