Etymology From dough + nut, 1809 because originally small, nut-sized balls of fried dough, or, more likely, from nut in the earlier sense of "small rounded cake or cookie", with the toroidal shape becoming common in the twentieth century. First attested in Knickerbocker’s History of New York, by Washington Irving, 1809.
A deep-fried piece of dough or batter, usually mixed with various sweeteners and flavors, often made in a toroidal or ellipsoidal shape flattened sphere shape filled with jelly/jam, custard, or cream.
The soldiers, drawn up in hollow square—how apt is this word hollow, when applied to men who have fasted, in view of promised doughnuts!—received the procession, which consisted of music, then the ladies, then the doughnuts.1865, Frank B. Goodrich, The Tribute Book, Derby & Miller, page 45:
One American student sought my help to take the work further in his school science project, in which he studied how doughnuts differ from cookies.2003, Len Fisher, How to Dunk a Doughnut, U.S. edition, Arcade Publishing, page 2:
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2018, Karen Scott, Margaret Webb, Clare Kostelnick, Long-Term Caring: Residential, Home and Community Aged Care, 4th Edition, Australia and New Zealand Edition, Elsevier Australia, page 227, The prostate gland lies just below the bladder and is shaped like a doughnut.
He put on the life jacket and began paddling around. A doughnut life raft popped up out of the ocean in front of him.1996, John Long, Close Shaves: Classic Stories on the Edge, page 2:
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Natural sciences, Physical sciences, PhysicsFiguratively A toroidal vacuum chamber.
In about 1951, the same company sealed into their vacuum doughnuts the regenerative peelers so that X-ray beams or electron beams could be obtained with the sealed off commercial tubes used in […]2012, Edward Creutz, Nuclear Instrumentation I, page 213:
The advantage of the doughnuts was that they spread the weight of the aeroplane over a much larger area of ground, causing less damage to grass, and making them less prone to bogging down in wet conditions.1975, Flight International (volume 107, part 2)
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Figuratively A shaper for making hair into a ponytail or bun
Place the hair doughnut/ring around your ponytail2014, Of Beauty & Nothingness:
When I was at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art . . . there was a lady student there — and I had designs on her doughnut1993, Ken Campbell, Pigspurt, Or, Six Pigs from Happiness:
My mother was sixteen when she lost her doughnut. Said she waited till she was legal. She was itching to do it she said.1994, Plays International, volume 10, page 39:
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Girl, now you've reached puberty Your doughnut should cover itself With curly hair, with soft hair.1997, Josiane Racine, Viramma, Life of an Untouchable, page 33:
Make my jelly roll with your doughnut hole.2008, Diana Skylar, Seduction, page 155:
The bearded clan's men approaches in order to munch the carpet, kiss the kitten, and suck the wet doughnut! You open your legs wide showing the view that makes me drool!2012, Ole Eddie Kane The Next Generation, Moments and Fantasies, page 38:
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Figuratively, Slang, Vulgar A puffy anus with the outward shape of a donut; more generally, any anus.
Etymology From dough + nut, 1809 because originally small, nut-sized balls of fried dough, or, more likely, from nut in the earlier sense of "small rounded cake or cookie", with the toroidal shape becoming common in the twentieth century. First attested in Knickerbocker’s History of New York, by Washington Irving, 1809.
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To encircle something.
[…] even the notorious ‘doughnuting’ (gathering around the Member speaking) appears to have fallen out of fashion.1995, F[rederick] F[ernand] Ridley, Michael Rush, editors, British Government and Politics Since 1945: Changes in Perspective, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 163:
My body flew like a rag doll as he relentlessly and with purpose kept doughnuting the car in wilder circles.2003, April Smith, Good Morning, Killer, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 341:
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Press people doughnutted around him.2003, New Statesman, page 48:
At 12.30 in the afternoon – half-an-hour earlier and she could have been accused of perpetrating an April Fool’s swansong deception – Hughes stood up in the Commons, doughnutted by as ugly a bunch of sad or scowling Blair babes as you could gather.2004, Steve Moxon, “Storyline: Bev Gets Knotted”, in The Great Immigration Scandal, Imprint Academic, →ISBN, page 195:
The desiccated scoreboard flag wiggled atop an Impala that doughnutted the fifty-yard line.2009, Jamie Iredell, Prose. Poems. A Novel., Orange Alert Press, →ISBN, page 27:
Ms Lumley’s co-campaigners were behind him, and had arranged it so there were pictures of injured Gurkhas behind each of his ears. What a terrible fate for any politician, to be doughnutted by hideous lacerations!2009 May 8, Simon Hoggart, Send Up the Clowns: Parliamentary Sketches 2007–2011, Guardian Books, published 2011, →ISBN: