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dogless

dogless

1 3.7
Not having a dog at home or nearby
  • adjective
  • /ˈdɔɡləs/
: sin perro
  • After many years of enjoying a dogless lifestyle, she finally decided to adopt a puppy.

Examples

  • What about me, a dogless boy cooped up in some tiny apartment!

    Fiction book (1995)
  • And where would I go, alone and unarmed, horseless and dogless, with a small child?

    Fiction book (2000)
  • And that we spend our college years... as a chickless, dogless jerk with a twitch?

  • When they reached the spring and heard again the dogless night, Larry knelt and scooped water into his mouth.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • A dogless, chickless guy?

  • Living in a dogless apartment made it hard for him to connect with his dog-loving friends.

  • She felt lonely in her dogless home, missing the companionship that a pet would provide.

Surface Forms

dogless positive

Morphology

dogless = dog (transparent) = dog + less

The negative suffix '-less' attaches to the concrete noun 'dog' to mean 'without a dog', which is directly inferable by learners.

Etymology

Dogless is made from dog and the ending -less, which means 'without', like in homeless or hopeless. So dogless simply means 'not having a dog' or without a dog present.