One child first used bow-wow to refer to a dog andthen to a fur piece with glass eyes, a set of cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. The word bow-wow seemed to have a meaning like ‘object with shiny bits’. Other children often extend
bow-wow to refer to cats, cows and horses. This process is called overextension and the most common pattern is for the child to overextend the meaning of a word onthe basis of similarities of shape, sound and size,and, to a lesser extent, movement and texture