hound

Meaning

Noun

1. A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
2. Any canine animal.
3. Someone who seeks something.
4. A male who constantly seeks the company of desirable women.
5. A despicable person.
6. A houndfish.

Verb

1. To persistently harass.
2. To urge on against; to set (dogs) upon in hunting.

Pronounced as (IPA)

/haʊnd/

Etymology

From Middle English hound, from Old English hund, from Proto-West Germanic *hund, from Proto-Germanic *hundaz. Cognate with West Frisian hûn, Dutch hond, Luxembourgish Hond, German Hund, German Low German Hund, Danish hund, Faroese hundur, Icelandic hundur, Norwegian Bokmål hund, Norwegian Nynorsk hund, and Swedish hund, from pre-Germanic *ḱuntós (compare Latvian sùnt-ene (“big dog”), enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓ (“dog”) (compare Old Irish cú (“dog”), Tocharian B ku, Lithuanian šuõ, Armenian շուն (šun), Russian сука (suka)). Doublet of canine.
In 14th-century England, hound was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype resembling the modern mastiff and bulldog. By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to breeds used for hunting.