PUPPY

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does puppy mean? 

• PUPPY (noun)
  The noun PUPPY has 2 senses:

1. a young dog

2. an inexperienced young person

  Familiarity information: PUPPY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PUPPY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A young dog

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("puppy" is a kind of...):

pup; whelp (young of any of various canines such as a dog or wolf)

Canis familiaris; dog; domestic dog (a member of the genus Canis (probably descended from the common wolf) that has been domesticated by man since prehistoric times; occurs in many breeds)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An inexperienced young person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

pup; puppy

Hypernyms ("puppy" is a kind of...):

spring chicken; young person; younker; youth (a young person (especially a young man or boy))

 Context examples 

He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

You were always a puppy with a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It was only the last time they met that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this was the end of it!

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

You must know I have a vast dislike to puppies—quite a horror of them.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Puppies have more wrinkles than adults.

(Chinese Shar-Pei, NCI Thesaurus)

Puppies are often born dark, but the adult comes in many combinations of black, black and tan, reddish, red grizzle, wheat, liver and blue, grizzle, and grizzle and tan.

(Lakeland Terrier, NCI Thesaurus)

Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, rubbers, invitations, scoldings, and puppies.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)