Doge (often /ˈdoʊdʒ/ DOHJ, /ˈdoʊɡ/ DOHG)[1] is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme typically consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English.



The meme is based on a 2010 photograph, and became popular in late 2013, being named as Know Your Meme's "top meme" of that year. A cryptocurrency based on Doge, the Dogecoin, was launched in December 2013, and the Shiba Inu has been featured on Josh Wise's NASCAR car as part of a sponsorship deal. Doge has also been referenced by members of the United States Congress, a safety video for Delta Air Lines, a Google Easter egg, and the video for the song "Word Crimes" by "Weird Al" Yankovic. Toward the end of the decade, the meme saw a resurgence in popularity. Several online polls and media outlets recognized Doge as one of the best Internet memes of the 2010s.



Doge uses two-word phrases in which the first word is almost always one of five modifiers ("so", "such", "many", "much", and "very"), and the departure from correct English is to use the modifier with a word that it cannot properly modify.[2] For example, "Much respect. So noble." uses the doge modifiers but is not "proper" doge because the modifiers are used in a formally correct fashion; the doge version would be "Much noble, so respect."[2] In addition to these phrases, a doge utterance often ends with a single word, most often "wow" but with "amaze" and "excite" also being used.[2]



Since the inception of the meme, several variations and spin-offs have been created, including "liquified Doge",[3][4] a variation wherein the dog's shape is morphed into other animals, and "ironic Doge",[3] a version where the Doge character is put into ironic and uncharacteristic situations. The ironic Doge memes have spawned several other related characters, often dogs themselves.