donut
Pluraldonuts
UK spellingdoughnut
- 1A piece of dough or batter, usually sweetened and flavored, that is deep-fried and often shaped as a ring or as a flattened ball filled with jelly, custard, or cream.
She bit into the jelly donut and got powdered sugar all over her shirt.
The bakery on Main Street sells fresh donuts until they run out, often before ten.
Note
The short spelling is a respelling of doughnut, a compound of dough and nut, and it has been in print since 1900. Earlier writing uses the long form: in Frank B. Goodrich's The Tribute Book (1865), soldiers wait for promised doughnuts. The two spellings are interchangeable here and in the ring-shaped senses that grew from the pastry.
- 2Any object shaped like a torus: a thick, rounded ring with a hole through its middle.
Satellite images showed the storm's clouds forming a donut around a clear, calm eye.
The sculptor's courtyard is filled with bronze donuts big enough for children to climb through.
Similarring
Note
The pastry lends its name to its outline in this figurative use: once the ring of dough had a word, anything with that shape could borrow it. Several narrower donuts are this sense made particular, among them a circular life raft, a toroidal vacuum chamber and the hemorrhoid cushion, each a torus named after the fried treat. It pairs naturally with of: a donut of cloud, a donut of foam.
- 3A peel-out or skid in a full 360-degree circle, or the circular skid mark it leaves behind.
The driver celebrated his win by spinning donuts on the infield, smoke pouring from the tires.
By morning, a perfect black donut was burned into the asphalt outside the store.
Note
Car culture uses the word in the United States, Canada and Australia, and it travels with do or spin: drivers do donuts in an empty parking lot or spin donuts after a win.
- 4A spare car tire, usually kept in the trunk, that is smaller than a full-sized tire and meant only for temporary use.
The mechanic warned her not to take the highway with the donut still on.
After the blowout, he bolted on the donut and crept the last few miles home.
Similarspare
- 5A ring-shaped hair shaper that helps form hair into a ponytail or bun.
Dancers often use a donut to get a smooth, round bun that stays in place through rehearsal.
Slide the donut down to the base of the ponytail, then spread the hair evenly over it.
Note
Styling instructions call it a hair donut, which keeps it clear of the pastry, or simply a ring.
- 6A woman's vulva, or by extension her virginity.
Her roommate teased that she would lose her donut before the semester was over.
He made a crude remark about her donut and got a drink thrown in his face.
Similarcherry
Note
The pastry's ring shape gives this crude slang its image, and the word can give real offense. The virginity meaning turns up in the phrase lose her donut; otherwise it names the body part, in crude sexual talk. In polite or mixed company, vulva and virginity are the safe words.
- 7A person who is foolish or stupid; an idiot.
He called his brother a donut for locking them both out of the house.
Some donut parked across both spaces again.
Similaridiot, fool, dummy, twit
Note
Its natural home is direct address: Nice going, you donut! said to someone who has just done something foolish. Gordon Ramsay uses it on Kitchen Nightmares in 2012, with a stronger word in front, over a salad that should never have gone in the microwave. Colloquial and rude, it belongs to banter and scolding, not to careful writing.
- 8A ring-shaped cushion of the kind typically used by people with hemorrhoids.
The nurse suggested a donut to make the long drive home less painful.
He kept a foam donut on his office chair for weeks after the flare-up.
Practice
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Origin
An altered form of "doughnut," from "dough" plus "nut," first attested in 1900.