A dog breed or type of hound known for having prominent hair or fur; possibly a historical term for certain hunting dogs.
From Old English 'hær' (hair) + 'hund' (dog, from Proto-Germanic 'hundaz'). Compound terms like this were once used to distinguish dog types before systematic breed naming.
Before dog breeds had official names and registries, people used descriptive compound words like this to tell dogs apart—'hairhound' would have helped a medieval hunter explain to another hunter what kind of dog they had, the same way we still say 'longhair' or 'shorthair' today.
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