dog Latin
Americannoun
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mongrel or spurious Latin.
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a jargon imitating Latin.
noun
Etymology
Origin of dog Latin
First recorded in 1760–70
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.
The Italian language, recently emerged from dog Latin, had just begun to serve literary uses, and Frederick's court had the honour of producing the first school of Italian poetry.
From A Short History of Italy (476-1900) by Sedgwick, Henry Dwight
Who ever bought, who ever read, those cloudy tomes in dog Latin?
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 by Various
Vegetable diet and dog Latin are strong provocatives of thirst, and the number of times that I was compelled to say 'ad salutem' in the course of the evening was astonishing.
From Herzegovina Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels by Arbuthnot, George
It is not dog Latin, but Latin ingeniously italianized, or rather Italian, even Mantuan, latinized.
From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1 by Motteux, Peter Anthony
The dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason for its creation of the verb denasare.
From The Man Who Laughs by Hugo, Victor
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.
