The word only ever used to have a sexual connotation. But thanks to semantic bleaching, it is suddenly everywhere
So, what do we think? Come December, is “rawdogging” going to be Oxford University Press’s word of the year? It’s certainly a strong contender. Around this time last year, rawdogging – originally slang for sex without a condom – wasn’t the sort of word you would hear in polite conversation or find in the pages of the Guardian and the BBC. Now, it’s everywhere and being used, largely by gen Z, for the most innocuous situations. Drink black coffee? You’re rawdogging caffeine! Don’t drink coffee at all? You’re rawdogging your mornings! Just finished a nine-hour flight with no entertainment but the flight map? Bro, you rawdogged travel!
The trend for rawdogging flights, which started getting attention earlier this summer, has propelled the term into the mainstream. But the word has been used in nonsexual contexts for several years and, over that time, undergone the early stages of “semantic bleaching”. Its obscene origins have been diluted and for a lot of people it’s no longer remotely scandalous; it just means doing something without assistance.
