dough

noun, verb — 4 senses

dough

noun

UK /dəʊ/ · US /doʊ/

Etymology

From Middle English dow, dogh, dagh, from Old English dāg, from Proto-Germanic *daigaz (“dough”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to knead, form, mold”). Cognate with Scots daich, dauch, doach (“dough”), North Frisian dii, Jai (“dough”), West Frisian daai (“dough”), Dutch deeg (“dough”), German Teig (“dough”), Low German and Luxembourgish Deeg (“dough”), Vilamovian taag (“dough”), Yiddish טייג (teyg, “dough”), Danish dej (“dough”), Faroese deiggj (“dough”), Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk deig (“dough”), Swedish deg (“dough”), Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌹𐌲𐍃 (daigs, “dough”). The derivation of the second meaning (of money) is obscure, but dates to the mid 19th century.

1

Usually A thick, malleable substance made by mixing flour with other ingredients such as water, eggs, or butter, that is made into a particular form and then baked.

  • Pizza dough is very stretchy.
2

Slang, Usually Money.

  • His mortgage payments left him short on dough.
  • "I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. Have ye got th' dough?"1906, O. Henry, “From the Cabby's Seat”, in The Four Million, page 170:
2 more examples
  • I am astonished, really astonished, that you didn't put away some dough. You must be bananas.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 377:
  • “It is already an incredibly saturated market,” Ms. Jones said of explicit content online. “The idea that people are just going to open up an OnlyFans account and start raking in the dough is really misguided.”2021 January 13, Gillian Friedman, “Jobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still Struggling”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
3

Government, Military, Politics, War US, Abbreviation, Clipping, Slang, Usually Clipping of doughboy (“an infantryman”).

Derived terms
32 termsbread dough, cookie dough, donut, dough-baked, doughball, doughbird, doughboy, doughface, dough-faced, dough gob, dough goddy, doughless, doughlike, doughmaking, Doughman, dough mixer, doughnut, dough scraper, doughy, fried dough, hard dough bread, live dough, mother dough, one's cake is dough, playdough, plum dough, predough, roll in dough, rolling in dough, salt dough, sourdough, starter dough

dough

verb
Etymology

From Middle English dow, dogh, dagh, from Old English dāg, from Proto-Germanic *daigaz (“dough”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to knead, form, mold”). Cognate with Scots daich, dauch, doach (“dough”), North Frisian dii, Jai (“dough”), West Frisian daai (“dough”), Dutch deeg (“dough”), German Teig (“dough”), Low German and Luxembourgish Deeg (“dough”), Vilamovian taag (“dough”), Yiddish טייג (teyg, “dough”), Danish dej (“dough”), Faroese deiggj (“dough”), Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk deig (“dough”), Swedish deg (“dough”), Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌹𐌲𐍃 (daigs, “dough”). The derivation of the second meaning (of money) is obscure, but dates to the mid 19th century.

1

To make into dough.

  • The flour was doughed with a suitable quantity of water.
Derived terms
dougher

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.