狗头gǒu tóu

Dog head (the doge emoji)

wǒ shì rèn zhēn de [gǒu tóu]我是认真的[狗头]I’m serious [doge]

狗头 is the Shiba Inu “doge” emoji. You add it to the end of a message to show that you are joking, teasing or being ironic, so nobody takes it the wrong way.

Took off: 2014
Started in: A Weibo emoji
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

狗头 means “dog head”. In a chat it works like a wink: the sentence before it is not meant seriously. On many apps you type [狗头] and it turns into the emoji.

People also say 狗头保命, “a dog head to save my life”. You put the emoji after a cheeky comment so that nobody gets angry at you.

How people use it

It is everyday chat now. A message with 狗头 at the end reads as a joke, even when the words are rude, so it is for friends. In a serious message it reads as mockery, so leave it out of apologies and work emails.

灯灯

我做的蛋糕，好看吗？
wǒ zuò de dàn gāo, hǎo kàn ma?
I made a cake. Does it look good?
很有艺术感[狗头]
hěn yǒu yì shù gǎn [gǒu tóu]
Very artistic [doge]
你什么意思？
nǐ shén me yì si?
What’s that supposed to mean?
开玩笑的，看起来很好吃
kāi wán xiào de, kàn qǐ lai hěn hǎo chī
Just kidding. It looks delicious.
[Sticker] the Weibo doge emoji, sly sideways look

More examples

你今天又迟到了，老板一定很想你[狗头]
nǐ jīn tiān yòu chí dào le, lǎo bǎn yí dìng hěn xiǎng nǐ [gǒu tóu]
Late again today. The boss must miss you [doge]
说真的，你唱歌比歌手还好听，狗头保命。
shuō zhēn de, nǐ chàng gē bǐ gē shǒu hái hǎo tīng, gǒu tóu bǎo mìng.
Really, you sing better than a pro. Dog head to save my life.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 狗头 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

The dog is Kabosu, a Shiba Inu in Japan whose owner posted photos of her on a blog. One sideways look became the English-language “doge” meme, which spread from 4chan to Reddit in 2013, Huxiu writes.

Weibo drew its own version for a new emoji set in 2014, ifanr reports: a round dog head with big, half-closed eyes. Users gave it new jobs, such as 狗头保命 and 正话反说, “saying the opposite of what you mean”, and it replaced the older habit of writing “I’m being ironic” in words.

Other apps followed with their own dog heads, among them QQ, Bilibili and Douyin. WeChat added one in January 2020.

Weibo's doge emoji: a round, beige Shiba Inu head with pointed ears, its eyes glancing sideways and a sly half-smile — The original meme image. The 狗头 (doge) emoji in Sina Weibo's emoji set, drawn by Weibo after the Kabosu doge photo; this is the current version, cropped from ifanr's history of the Weibo dog head. Source

Sources

ifanr, April 2021 (in Chinese) (ifanr.com)
Huxiu: where the doge dog is now, July 2020 (in Chinese) (huxiu.com)

Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. The original meme image belongs to its owner and is shown to explain the meme. To ask us to remove it, write to legal@dengdeng.app.