dogie

(origin uncertain, see below)

   1) West: 1888. A motherless calf; a young, scrawny calf; a runt.

   Alternate forms: doge, dogee, dogey, doghie, dogie calf, dogy, doughie.

   2) Arizona, California: 1921. By extension, a motherless lamb. Also dogie lamb.

   3) Adams indicates this term sometimes means a laced shoe.

   4) According to Blevins, also used adjectivally in a humorous way for anything doomed to failure or "unlikely to survive." The origin of this term is uncertain, but there are many theories. Hendrickson provides several possibilities. The term may be from "dough-guts," referring to the swollen bellies of orphaned calves, or it may derive from "doggie," a playful way to refer to young calves. This latter etymology does not explain why the stem vowel of dogie is never pronounced [a] (as in doggie) but as [o]. Hendrickson, among others, also claims that it derives from the Spanish adobe or "dobie." Both he and Blevins also note that it may have derived from Bambara dogo or African Creole dogi, both of which mean 'short' or 'small.' Hendrickson hypothesizes that the term was originally applied by black cowboys. Blevins cites Owen Wister, who believes that the term comes from doga, a term meaning 'trifling stock.' Dale Jarman (personal communication) presents the most convincing etymology. He derives the term from dogal (see above), since these young orphaned calves could be led by a rope tied around the neck. It is possible that some cowpoke who knew enough Spanish to mistakenly identify -al as the common collective suffix, may have coined the blend: supposed Spanish root dog plus the English diminutive. Spanish sources do not reference a similar term.

   see adobe