Homophones
Minimal pairs
Freq #4502
Meanings
- 1
- 2
Thesaurus
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.