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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

dough.

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.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/doʊ/General-American[ˈdö̞ʷʊ̯ʷ]General-American/dʊf/Northern-England
  1. 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.

    uncountable · usually
    Pizza dough is very stretchy.
  2. Money.

    slang · uncountable · usually
    His mortgage payments left him short on dough.
  3. Clipping of doughboy (“an infantryman”).

    US · abbreviation · alt-of · clipping · countable · slang · usually
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *dʰóyǵʰos Proto-Germanic *daigaz Proto-West Germanic *daig Old English dāg Middle English dogh English dough 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.

verb/dəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/doʊ/General-American[ˈdö̞ʷʊ̯ʷ]General-American/dʊf/Northern-England
  1. To make into dough.

    transitive
    The flour was doughed with a suitable quantity of water.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *dʰóyǵʰos Proto-Germanic *daigaz Proto-West Germanic *daig Old English dāg Middle English dogh English dough 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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.