12 February 2025
The American Dialect Society selected rawdog as its 2024 Word of the Year (WOTY). The word is interesting not only because it was, at the time of selection, a popular and trending slang term, but it is of linguistic note in that its meaning has gone through a series of semantic changes over the course of its life, broadening in meaning.
When rawdog entered into general slang discourse it had a meaning relating to engaging in sexual intercourse without a condom. (There was an older sense in Black slang meaning to abuse or cause harm.) But within a few years it broadened in meaning to mean to engage in an activity without preparation. This broadening occurred long before most people think it did. Furthermore, many people associate the term with queer discourse, but the evidence shows that early use was by no means limited to the queer community, getting its start in Black slang before spreading into musical discourse via hip-hop, and then into use more generally.
The oldest known use of the term is recorded by Green’s Dictionary of Slang in a Black slang glossary prepared for Los Angeles police officers, Todd R. Houser’s 1985 Central Slang: A Police Officer’s Training Guide:
raw dog To treat someone worse than a dog. To bring cruel abuse and heartless harm to bear.
The sexual sense seems to be in place a decade later when rap disc jockey Tony Touch released his 1995 mix tape Hip Hop 43 which contains the line, “Giving it to you rawdog, baby.” I can’t find the wider context for this line, but it would seem to refer to unprotected sex. The progression from to abuse or cause harm to engage in unprotected sex seems rather obvious, especially given the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 90s, before effective treatments for the disease were available.
But the sexual sense is unambiguously in place by 1999, when it appears in rapper DMX’s song “Good Girls, Bad Guys” on the album …And Then There Was X:
Turn a church girl to a straight Ruff Ryder
Take her to the Ramada make it an all nighter
Oh no, I only go to the Swiss hotel)
Fuckin with me? I have you in the back of the Chevelle
Like what (what) hittin it raw dogg in the butt
You was good this mornin, but tonight you a slut
If one searches Usenet for instances of term, one finds hundreds of hits from the 1990s for raw dog being used as a label for various musical projects and artists, but exactly what meaning or meanings this label was intended to convey is unclear.
But within five years of DMX’s song, the sexual sense of rawdog underwent its first broadening in meaning. Connie Eble’s Campus Slang for 2004 defines the verb as “to engage in wild fun, particularly sex: I totally rawdogged her.”
For further examples of the progression of the shift in meaning one needs to turn to Urbandictionary.com. Now, Urbandictionary is hardly an authoritative source, but when used carefully, it can be a source for evidence of slang use. And on 26 December 2005 a user posted the earliest known use of the broadened sense of to engage in some activity unprepared:
To go into something unprepared, without thinking
I went into that test Raw Dog!
What follows is a series of posts to Urbandictionary that give various specific applications of and even more broadening of the term’s meaning. On 26 November 2006 a user applied as an adjective referring to uncooked food:
Food that is uncooked.
I aint eatin that raw dog hamburger. Fuck dat shit.
On 19 October 2007 we get this even more general sense:
go all out, throw caution to the wind, go all the way
Noah went raw dog and decided to get a Bachelor's of Science in Engineering rather than a weak Bachelor's of Applied Science.
On 1 July 2009 we get a specific application of the noun rawdog that links back to the older unprotected sex meaning:
#1- v. sexual intercourse without using a condom.
#2- v. The act of masturbating with no pornography.
#1-
Dane: “Mary, I don't have a condom.”
Mary: “Oh thats OK just stick it in raw dog!”
#2-
Mike: “Oh dude my computers been broken for like a week.”
Alex: “Shit dude, no porn!?”
Mike: “Nah!”
Alex: “So have you jerked it?”
Mike: “Yeah man, fucking raw dogin it all week.”
Not all of Urbandictionary’s entries reflect a broadening of the sense. An entry from 18 November 2009 records a semantic shift of the unprotected sex sense from verb to noun, a condomless penis, although the example sentence given doesn’t match the definition:
a clean, condomless, steamy, piping hot dick ready to fuck a bitch
woman: oh my god just put it in me!!!
man: i cant i seem to be lacking a condom
woman: i dont care! put it in raw dog!!
Urbandictionary has a 2 February 2010 entry for the phrase raw dog and bail:
To completely exploit someone or something in a quick and greedy manner, usually involving theft, consumption, or abuse of someones good will.
Adam: "Freshman kegger down the street."
Bob: "Let's raw dog and bail that shizz then go to the bar."
"I only offered you a slice and now half my pizza is gone, way to raw dog and bail it."
Subsequent entries define the phrase to mean to engage in unprotected sex and then ghost one’s partner. It seems likely that despite the more general sense of raw dog and bail being recorded first, the sexual sense of the phrase is the older one.
A 5 January 2010 entry has this definition and example:
eating food with your hands while shitfaced
"dude, i was so hammered new year's eve I was raw dog-n' that mac 'n cheese right outta the pot"
And on 15 July 2010, one Urbandictionary contributor, Jwk93, posted three entries, giving various examples of the general sense of rawdog:
To enter blindly into an unfamiliar or unsafe situation, with little regard for any harmful potential consequences.
Hank: Hey, let's go skydiving.
Sam: But the instructor isn't certified.
Hank: Dude, calm down. Let's raw dog it, and don't worry, we'll be totally safe.
Terry: Excited for the party?
Bill: No. We weren't invited, and the host actually wants us dead.
Terry: Woah now -- relax, bro. Just raw dog it and you'll be fine.
The second:
to put forth a lackluster effort.
Gus procrastinated so much on his term paper that he was forced to raw dog it the night before it was due.
And the third:
to undergo a task, paying little attention to detail.
Jon: Hey Betty, would you make me a sandwich?
Betty: Sure, what would you like on it?
Jon: Doesn't matter. Just raw dog it.
Hairdresser: Do you care how I cut your hair?
Samantha: No, just raw dog it, I only have 20 minutes.
On 12 April 2011 we have this entry from a contributor going by the handle theduderuns, indicating that the term had a specific meaning to the running community:
(verb) To run barefoot.
1. Screw shoes I'd rather raw dog it.
2. I saw a dude rawdogging through midtown manhattan today.
We get this on 23 June 2011:
The act of not giving a fuck about consequences, just living life.
Casey: Yo I hit 120 in my car the other day.
"The Raw Dog Crew": Thats so Raw Dog.
And another very specific application of the term on 14 June 2012:
v. making direct contact with a public toilet.
They were out of sanitation wraps so I had to raw dog the toilet.
There is this example from 5 June 2013 that rather obviously and inventively extends the sense of unprotected sex to protecting one’s smartphone from damage:
Not protecting one's iPhone/smartphone with a case.
Generally considered a risky practice, it appeals to reckless individuals who think a bare phone feels and looks better.
“Even though I bought an Otter Box, I never use it. I don't like how it feels when I try and slide it into my pocket.”
“I was raw dogging it at the bars this weekend. I woke up with some weird-looking little bumps on my screen. I rubbed it down with alcohol, so I think I'll be OK.”
Applications of rawdogging to uncooked food continue to remain relevant. Here is one from 3 September 2014:
To eat an uncooked food.
Aren't you going to cook that pop tart? You're not raw dogging it are you?
An entry from 5 May 2015:
Ordering a sheet cheese pizza with uncooked pepperoni
“Yo let me get two raw dogs for delivery”
And another from 22 March 2018:
eating a meat product, say a hamburger or hot dog without a bun
“Ugh, you took the last bun?! Guess I'll have to raw dog this hot dog then...”
The sexual sense of rawdog may have originally been inspired by the AIDS pandemic, but decades later the Covid-19 pandemic had its own form of rawdogging. From 26 January 2021:
When a person goes to public places without any sort of face mask on while in the middle of a pandemic.
"Hey, do you want to go inside the store for some groceries?"
"Nah man. Too many people raw dogging the air."
"You're right. We'll just do a pick-up order"
Finally there is this entry from 9 February 2022, which is unusual for Urbandictionary in that it was clearly written by a linguist or lexicographer:
To perform any act recklessly or without preparation. A semantic broadening of the original sense of unprotected intercourse based on connotations of risk. In response to interrogatives, it is often preceded by exclamation “nah”, a vocative such as “man”/”dude” and elision “Imma”.
“Are you studying for Macy's test?”
“Nah, man. Imma raw dog it.”
“I considered purchasing the per diem rental car insurance, but opted instead to raw dog it.”
Rawdog is an excellent example of how a slang term can change in meaning as it is adopted by a wider community and how terms and their senses are often much older than most people think they are.
Sources:
Friedman, Nancy. “Word of the Week: Rawdog.” Fritinancy (blog), 13 January 2025.
DMX. “Good Girls, Bad Guys” (lyrics). Genius.com, n.d.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. rawdog, adj., raw dog, v., raw dogg, n.
Urbandictionary.com, s.v. raw dog, accessed 17 January 2025.
Photo credit: Corode, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.