doggedly
Americanadverb
Etymology
Origin of doggedly
Explanation
The adverb doggedly means "tenaciously" or "with strong determination." If your dog ran away, you might doggedly pursue him across the park, down the road, and through the woods. Doggedly is the adverb form of the adjective dogged. In the 1300s, both words meant having the negative qualities of a dog, or mean and cruel. By the late 1700s, both had evolved to mean "persistent" and "with determination." If you doggedly insisted on your innocence, despite the evidence linking you to your brother's missing baseball mitt, you might then search doggedly for the mitt, not stopping until you found it in the dog house.
Vocabulary lists containing doggedly
The Outsiders
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A Raisin in the Sun
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"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
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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.
Scrum after scrum failed to gain Glasgow the momentum they needed in the closing stages and the visitors doggedly saw out the narrowest of victories.
From BBC • Jun. 6, 2026
Microsoft was also late to cloud software, before doggedly making the pivot under CEO Nadella.
From Barron's • Mar. 13, 2026
Mr. Gore doggedly sold his Reinventing Government effort, even going on David Letterman’s late-night TV show.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 1, 2026
"This outcome should make plain that time does not preclude a successful prosecution; we will doggedly pursue justice for the victims of non-recent crimes, no matter how many decades have passed."
From BBC • Feb. 2, 2026
Baachan and Mama stood up to watch, but Jiichan doggedly worked.
From "A Place to Belong" by Cynthia Kadohata
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.
