The sound a dog makes when it barks, often spelled to mimic how a dog's bark sounds to humans.
An onomatopoeia—a word created by imitating the actual sound it represents. The spelling 'arf' became popular in English comic books and children's literature in the early 20th century.
Dogs across the world make similar barking sounds, but different languages hear them completely differently—'arf' in English, 'wau-wau' in Japanese, 'vov' in Hebrew, 'gaf' in Arabic—which shows how human brains filter animal sounds through their own language patterns.
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