golden retriever

American

noun

one of an English breed of retrievers having a thick, flat or wavy, golden coat.

golden retriever British

noun

a compact large breed of dog having a silky coat of flat or wavy hair of a gold or dark-cream colour, well-feathered on the legs and tail

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

golden retrievers

plural

Etymology

Origin of golden retriever

First recorded in 1915–20

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:

golden retriever

I swiped right on a man whose profile pic was of him hiking Runyon Canyon with his golden retriever.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026

While I’d sooner take life advice from my golden retriever than a chatbot, my parents aligned with their contemporaries in treating Claude as a Google substitute.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

In the photos released on social media on Sunday, she is also joined by her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, her brother James, and a golden retriever.

From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026

The world’s largest type of rodent, actually; a capybara can easily rival a golden retriever in size.

From Slate ● May 27, 2026

Bieber is a golden retriever, and he has these big, brown, kind of manic eyes.

From "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023