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US /doʊ/ UK /dəʊ/
Homophones
Freq #4502

Meanings

  1. 1
  2. 2

Thesaurus

Synonyms
1 noun · a thick, moldable mixture... bread mixturepastry mixture
2 noun · money, in informal usage moneycashbread
Word family
Derived forms doughydoughnutdonutdoughboy
Related forms kneadbatterflour

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Dough is an Old English word for a flour-and-water mixture. It derives from a word meaning “knead,” which also contributed to the Old English compound that became lady; the northern variant duff developed from dough as well.

Etymology

From Middle English dough and Old English dag, from a Proto-Germanic word also ancestral to German Teig and Dutch deeg. It ultimately relates to an Indo-European root meaning "to knead or form." The slang sense "money" arose in American English, probably through comparison with bread, another long-standing money metaphor.

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