Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A wild dog (Canis lupus subsp. dingo) of Australia and Southeast Asia, having a reddish-brown or yellowish-brown coat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The Australian dog, Canis dingo, of wolf-like appearance and extremely fierce.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A wild dog found in Australia, but supposed to have introduced at a very early period. It has a wolflike face, bushy tail, and a reddish brown color.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Canis lupus dingo, a wild dog native to Australia.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun wolflike yellowish-brown wild dog of Australia

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Dharuk diŋgu.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Dharug dingu ("tame dingo").

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Examples

  • Description: The dingo is a declared pest in most states of Australia, and livestock farmers are obliged to cull them.

    Biodiversity 100: actions for Australia Guillaume Chapron 2010

  • Early settlers sometimes talked of native dogs or wild dogs, but the name dingo was established from early settlement.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIV No 3 1988

  • Oddly enough, the word dingo seems to have meant ` tame dog 'in the contributing language, and another word, warrigal, referred to the wild dog.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIV No 3 1988

  • Dogs on the whole are favorably regarded; the associations developed around the word dingo are uniformly pejorative.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIV No 3 1988

  • For of all animals in Australia the dingo is the most intolerable nuisance on account of its fondness for mutton.

    Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania Jewett Castello Gilson

  • The disappearance of 9-week-old Azaria Chamberlain in 1980 divided Australians between those who believed a native dog known as a dingo killed her and those who believed she was murdered by her mother.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • The disappearance of 9-week-old Azaria Chamberlain on Aug. 17, 1980, from a campsite near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru, divided Australians between those who believed a native dog known as a dingo killed her and those who believed she was murdered by her mother, Lindy Chamberlain.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • The ancestors of the Aborigines were lucky enough to find their way south, where there is more vegetation, and the dingo is a skillful hunter, able to look after itself.

    NYT > Home Page By NICHOLAS WADE 2011

  • The disappearance of 9-week-old Azaria Chamberlain on Aug. 17, 1980, from a campsite near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known but it Aboriginal name Uluru, divided Australians between those who believed a native dog known as a dingo killed her and those who believed she was murdered by her mother, Lindy Chamberlain.

    SFGate: Don Asmussen: Bad Reporter By ROD McGUIRK 2011

  • My Aussie dictionary defines myall as 'aborigine living in a traditional manner' and adds "also warrigal," the latter apparently meaning both 'dingo' and 'myall.'

    languagehat.com: ABORIGINES. 2005

Comments

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  • as in "A dingo ate my baby!!"

    October 20, 2008

  • Dingo is very Australian.

    Thommo: Jegoda footy Saddy?

    Jacko: Nar, dingo.

    December 3, 2008

  • Haha!

    December 3, 2008

  • Made me smile too.

    December 3, 2008

  • :) *sigh* Hope I don't die before I get back there...

    December 3, 2008

  • I can't think dingo without muttering scraps of The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo.

    December 4, 2008

  • Dingo was recently presented by a GQ staff writer as the male equivalent of a "cougar."

    April 9, 2009

  • What? David Hasselhoff is Australian?

    Well, bootstrap my bunyips! Who knew?

    April 9, 2009

  • Hasselhoff is the current Dingo poster boy!

    April 16, 2009