Most DNS tools (like dig and nslookup) perform IP lookups against DNS servers, ignoring /etc/hosts entries. Luckily, OS X provides the dscacheutil command to perfom a number of functions including checking local host entries. Below is an example that I used to verify the hostname/IP address combo that my system had registered in /etc/hosts.

This command helped me resolve an issue I was having. Turns out I had two entries for the host.

$ dscacheutil -q host -a name dashboard.drupalvm.dev
name: dashboard.drupalvm.dev
ip_address: 192.168.88.88