Say What? How Did “Raw-Dogging” Go from Obscene to Okay?
June 24, 2025
Just after we returned from France, I found myself at a little bar called Trinity Market in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood.
Well, to say that I found myself there is not quite accurate. I went there deliberately.
You see, I had just spent 4 weeks living like a European, and that meant drinking wine every day. When in Rome…While I knew the transition back to my old Canadian ways was inevitable, I didn’t feel the need to rush headlong into it. So off I went to Trinity Market for a little Saturday afternoon tipple on their sunny patio.
When I stepped inside to pay—for my one glass of wine—the friendly fellow behind the bar inquired as to what else I was doing that day. Going to the butcher, I said. (I know, I lead a very exciting life.)
Well, at least you aren’t raw-dogging it, he replied.
Raw-dogging it? Normally, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what this guy was on about. But, somehow, pretty recently, I had read about “raw-dogging.” More miraculously, the meaning of this expression had managed to lodge itself in my brain.
Well, I told him, I actually like going to Cumbraes (the butcher). Still, he insisted, now you don’t have to do it without the wine.
That little exchange made me laugh inside. Did that guy actually just say “raw-dogging” to me???
If you are still scratching your head, let me explain.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, raw-dog or rawdog is a slang expression meaning to do something hard or boring without any aid, preparation, or diversions.
M-W elaborates:
The word is particularly used in playful or irreverent reference to engaging in ordinary experiences (such as air travel, exercising, or chores) without simultaneously engaging in some form of entertainment (such as listening to music or watching videos).
As I said, I like going to Cumbraes. I look forward to going to Cumbraes. It’s a beautiful specialty shop full of ethically-raised, locally-sourced products, and helpful, efficient staff to boot.
But, clearly, Trinity Market Barman sees it differently. For him, meat shopping is a dull or ordinary task. In his view, good on me for having the foresight to prepare myself for said task with a glass of wine. Thus fortified, I would surely find the chore of choosing my steaks and chicken thighs to be more palatable. (No pun intended.)
That’s a lot to decipher from one expression!
And to make things even more complicated, the meaning of raw-dog hasn’t always been this playful or innocuous. Indeed, the original meaning (and, as I understand it, a meaning still in use today) is “to have sex without a condom.”
As Nicholas Rolle, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University, told me, “raw dog” is part of a large family of words and phrases that start out as negative but then follow a path towards being positive.
Rolle gave me some other, more surprising (at least to me) examples. Like the word “knight.”
“Knight” derives from “cniht”, which in Old English, meant “boy” or “servant”—a person of low status. In medieval Europe, knights became armed, mounted warriors, and they were given money or property in exchange for fighting alongside their lords. With the prestige that came with this change in status, the term “knight” took on a more positive tone—one who “serves”, not as a mere labourer, but in a noble, genteel, or chivalrous way.
Today, knight is a title of honour in the British peerage system; it is bestowed for a variety of services, including, yes, soccer. Take a bow, Sir David Beckham.
Rolle also offered up “bad.” “Bad” is a word that has conventional meanings (evil or spoiled), but also another, opposite meaning—really good. “What a bad concert!” (It was amazing!) “That’s a bad car you’ve got there,” said the wide-eyed kid to the Ferrari owner. (Cool car!)
The point is, language changes as society changes. Rolle explained: “It’s largely urban youth who are driving this change, often young Black men, but not exclusively so. Young men with more leisure time on their hands are shaping the language in sometimes surprising ways.”
Rolle says people will use slang words or phrases like “raw dog” as a way to mark membership within a group. When you do, you’re saying, “not only do I know this word, but I also know how to use it.”
Indeed, the term “raw dogging” gained traction among Gen Z men in 2022 when a Tik Tok post by Torren Foot, an Australian music producer, went viral. (It received more than 11 million views.) Foot wrote: “Just rawdogged it, 15 hr flight to Melbourne. No movie, no music, just flightmap (I counted to one million twice).”
Rolle calls the process, whereby the meaning of a word changes over time from negative to positive, “amelioration.” Once a word has fully crossed over, we can say that it’s undergone “semantic bleaching.” Until that happens, however, the word or phrase will continue to retain some of its edginess, its offensiveness, its subversiveness.
That’s where we stand with “raw dog.” In fact, Rolle thinks raw dog might be fully bleached “in about a hundred years.”
In the meantime, raw dog is not a phrase I can see myself using anytime soon. And, call me old-fashioned, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the business setting either.
But exploring the changing meaning of this phrase does remind us how malleable and adaptable the English language is. And that, in my view, is a good thing. Or, rather, “That’s bad!”
Remember this:
Language inevitably evolves. Many words and phrases undergo a process of “amelioration”, moving along a path from negative to positive connotation over time. When a word or phrase has fully crossed over, it has been “semantically bleached.” Until that happens, be careful where and when you use those slightly edgy or traditionally offensive terms.