Important question for lietya!

[electricland]

What is the etymology of "doughnut"?

One of my officemates just suggested that it should be "doughnought", i.e. "a nought made out of dough". I said this was ridiculous. He pointed out that "a nut made out of dough" is just as ridiculous and his way is at least logical. I said we were talking about the English language here. He said that is true. Now we are both puzzled. Canadian Oxford Dictionary provides no help. Only you can save us!

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I.... don't know. Even the regular OED had nothing. It did, at least, tell me that the first (and all subsequent) citations used the "nut" spelling, so the idea that it originated as "nought" is fairly unlikely. Similarly, the first citation was for a *ball* - ie, without hole - of dough, which makes "nut" ever so marginally more plausible.


.....ah-ha!! Our etymology files contain a note from the 1950s saying that "nut" was attested as far back as 1775 to mean "a rounded sweet cake." So "dough-nut" would be redundant but explicable, and that's pretty definitely the origins.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

You rock so very much. That makes a great deal of sense!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

feel free to gloat at your coworker. :)

[punmeister.livejournal.com]

Three sites that I looked at
etymonline

Take Our Word For It

Word Origins

all had the same origin, so I'm guessing that it's the correct one.

from Word Origins:

Any number of people have inquired about the origin of the name of this pastry. The dough part is easy enough, but why nut?

The term doughnut is first attested to 1809, in Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York, but Irving is not referring to the toroidal confection that we know today. Instead, what he describes are small balls of fried dough, what we would today call doughnut holes:

An enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.

The nut comes from the size and shape of these balls, literally nuts made out of dough.

A common misperception is that the original spelling was "doughnought," referring to the hole in the middle. This is simply not true.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary Online)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

awesome! thank you!

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

i just saw a rerun of good eats on wednesday that went into the origins of the food and the word, and it's pretty much what was said above.

[archaica.livejournal.com]

Hah! "toroidal" :)

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

Aaand... damn. Now I want some. Doughnuts.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Preferably fried in front of me, at the Ex.

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

Hah! I'd forgotten about The Ex. And... yes. Those are fabulous.

[erbie.livejournal.com]

Good Eats just did a show on doughnuts. He claims they were created by the Pennsylvania Dutch and that it's an Anglicization of a Dutch word, but I can't remember what the word is.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

llnaughty has cleared this up for us, I believe. ;)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

sorry... and punmeister also!

[simplystars.livejournal.com]

hee... what about dough-naut? *g*

what? don't look at me like that... some men are terribly yummy!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Doughnaut. n. One who sets sail across an ocean of batter. Much looked up to by bakers and lovers of baked goods.

I like it!