Notice that the term 'Molossian hound' does not necessarily indicate that the Molossian was a hound-type dog. The word hound originally meant dog and was used for all types of dogs. Later, the meaning was narrowed in Middle English (somewhere before 1127) to refer to a dog used for hunting. Thus, in Old English, the nonspecific name for dog was 'hund' or 'hound', whereas the word 'dog' (docga in Old English) was the name of a powerful breed of dog, which the Continental languages borrowed to form dogue (French for mastiff), dogo (Spanish), Dogge (German).
On these molosser pages we have restricted the definition of the term to a number of modern molosser breeds which in phenotype and genotype show common characteristics with each other and with the historical descriptions of the Molossian dogs used as home guardians: dogs with substantial bone growth, impressive stature, a short square muzzle with massive jaws, overgrowth and thickening of the skin, a smooth coat (as opposed to the flock guardians who have an ample, usually longer-haired, weather- and work-resistant coat). All molosser breeds are characterized by their immense courage, loyalty towards their owner, and a strong sense of territory.
This category is comparable (but not identical!) to Section 2.1 of Group 2 in the classification used by the FCI. However, we do not use the term "Mastiff-type" which we feel is confusing due to the existing Mastiff breed. We prefer the denomination Molossers of the "dogge-type", rehabilitating an ancient English word that referred to a powerful breed of dog, and from which, as we said previously, all Continental languages derived the words, dogue (French), dogo (Spanish), Dogge (German), to refer to this same kind of dogs.
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