dogie小牛；无母犊牛；发育不良的小牛；小公牛；小羊；小马

【使用地区】：美国西部

【释义】：

A calf，a yearling，a motherless calf，a poor worthless calf，a steer，or even a lamb or a horse．The American cowboy has been shouting“git along，little dogie”for more than a century，but etymologists differ about the origin of the word．Some think it derives from“dough—guts，”referring to the bloated bellies of such calves；others think that dogie is a clipped form of the Spanish adobe(mud)；possibly it referred to cows so small that they were playfully called“doggies，”and the pronunciation changed．Since some American cowboys were black，there is also the possibility that the Bambara dogo(small，short)is the source，or the Afro—Creole dogi，meaning the same．

此词意义如上所示。一个多世纪以来，美国的牛仔一直叫唤着“git along，little dogie”(快走，小畜牲!)，但词源学家对其来源说法不一。有人认为，此词源于dough—guts，原指这种小牛膨胀的肚子；也有人认为，是西班牙语adobe的缩略形式，意为“泥土”；可能是因为母牛很小，人们就戏称它为doggies，其发音有了变化。因为有的美国牛仔是黑人，所以也有可能源于西非曼丁歌语dogo，意为“矮小的”，或来自非洲克里奥耳语dogi，，词义相同。