pup
Americannoun
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pups
plural
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a young dog; puppy.
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the young of certain other animals, as the rat, shark, or fur seal.
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a small plant developing as an offshoot from a mature plant.
verb (used without object)
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pups,
present (3rd person singular)
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pupped,
past participle, past
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pupping
present participle
noun
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a young dog, esp when under one year of age; puppy
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the young of various other animals, such as the seal
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(of a bitch) pregnant
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informal a conceited young man (esp in the phrase young pup )
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to swindle someone by selling him something worthless
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slang it's early yet
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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pupsimple
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pupssimple
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have puppedperfect
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has puppedperfect
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am puppingprogressive
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are puppingprogressive
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is puppingprogressive
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have been puppingperfect progressive
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has been puppingperfect progressive
Past
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puppedsimple
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had puppedperfect
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was puppingprogressive
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were puppingprogressive
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had been puppingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pup
First recorded in 1580–90; shortened variant of puppy
Explanation
Even though you probably think of a young, cuddly dog when you hear the word pup, a pup is the correct name for the young of many different mammals (even the not-so-cuddly porcupine!). When your dog has babies, they're pups, and the same is true of baby wolves. What's more surprising is that so are the baby anteaters in the zoo, as well as the offspring of sea lions, gerbils, and mongooses, among others. Sometimes this noun is also used to mean a young person who's particularly naive or arrogant. Pup comes from puppy, from the Middle French poupée, "doll."
Vocabulary lists containing pup
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Rachel Fealko, a third-generation Samoyed breeder in Ann Arbor, Mich., said she’s been getting more emails since word of Swift’s pup hit the internet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
With the help of a drone, firefighters say they were able to locate the tiny pup.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
When Diana Tupiza and Andres Alquinga decided to get married, they selected a rather unusual witness for the civil wedding ceremony: Luna, their Pekingese pup who stamped her paw print on the marriage certificate.
From Barron's ● Jul. 12, 2026
Even if you stay two nights in hotels, the cost of driving with your pup will be lower.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026
I took him and the speckled pup inside the kitchen and lit a candle.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
When temperatures rise, the females abandon their pups to hunt for food, he explained.
From Barron's ● Jul. 27, 2026
The force hopes the pups will one day emulate England's players by becoming stars in their own right, with tackling - of suspects, that is - listed among their duties.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
“We often have seen in the past with El Niños reduced productivity of California sea lions, and the pups are often smaller,” Leising said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
We counted nine capybaras: an adult male, four adult females, and four medium-sized pups.
From Slate ● May 27, 2026
In the spring, wolf packs stay at a nursery den where the pups are born deep in the earth at the end of long tunnels.
From "Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George
But they've beat me plumb out—same as if I was some sucker who ain't never roped an' branded a three-year-old steer since I was pupped.
From The Forfeit by Ridgwell Cullum
A thought struck me: one of the many curs, which range wild throughout Tehran, had just pupped under a ruined archway, close to our house.
From The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Morier
I tell you and your friends that it was not wolves that were pupped in the sand of the shaggy Prussian forests when the first Hohenzollern was dropped.
From The Crimson Tide A Novel by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
John Lang, Esq., deputy-sheriff of Selkirk, had a female cur big with pups, which on one occasion, when out in the fields attending the cattle, was taken in travail, and pupped on the moor.
From Anecdotes of Dogs by Edward Jesse
The creature was but pupped the day we left New York, six weeks come Tuesday.
From The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Although all of the cownose rays in Bermuda to date are females, we also observed small, immature rays suggesting pupping may have recently occurred here," said Ajemian.
From Science Daily ● May 20, 2024
This month the seals will begin another pupping season in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 23, 2024
The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 made it safe for the seals to return from Canadian waters, but they didn’t establish pupping colonies until the early 1990s.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 2, 2023
Incidents were equally common during the spring pupping season and in summer, researchers said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2023
Poetical as the dog is at all times, I know of no circumstance that develops more pathetically the disposition of the creature than that of pupping.
From The Dog by Dinks
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
