doughnut
Pluraldoughnuts
US spellingdonut
Pluraldoughnuts
Formsdoughnuts, doughnutting, doughnutted
- 1A portion of dough or batter, typically sweetened and flavoured, deep-fried and commonly formed into a ring or into a flattened ball with a filling of jam, custard or cream.
He dunked his doughnut in his tea and got sugar all down his chin.
The bakery on the high street sells custard doughnuts until they run out at lunchtime.
Note
The name is older than the ring. It joins dough and nut, probably from an earlier use of nut for a small round cake, and appears in print from the first years of the 1800s, as in Washington Irving's History of New York (1809); rings with a hole followed later that century.
- 2Any object in the form of a thick, rounded ring with a hole through its centre.
Seen from above, the new stadium is an enormous concrete doughnut.
She rolled the towel into a doughnut and rested her neck on it.
Similarring
Note
Most of the word's other uses grow from this one: life rafts, spare tyres, hair shapers, cushions, even a government building. Mathematicians call the shape a torus, and doughnut is its everyday name, so a phrase such as a doughnut-shaped stadium is understood at once by readers who would stumble over toroidal.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- A government building is known as the Doughnut. gchq.gov.uk
- The mathematical name for the familiar doughnut shape is torus. en.wikipedia.org
- 3A circle of skid marks left by spinning a vehicle round on the spot, or the spin that makes them.
The winning driver celebrated with a smoking doughnut at the finish line.
Someone had been doing doughnuts on the school field, leaving muddy rings all over the grass.
UsageYou usually do a doughnut or do doughnuts, rather than make them.
Note
Australian, Canadian and American drivers use the word, and it is heard in the UK too. You usually do doughnuts rather than make them, and the tyres leave the circle behind in rubber or mud, which is why the name borrows the general ring shape.
Less common meanings
- 4A person who acts foolishly or stupidly.
You've locked the keys in the car again, you doughnut!
Only a couple of doughnuts would try to cross the river in flip-flops.
UsageMostly in the mild, teasing insult you doughnut!, said to someone who has just done something daft.
Similaridiot, fool, twit, muppet, plonker
Note
On its own it is a mild, often teasing insult, but Gordon Ramsay's outbursts in Kitchen Nightmares show how a swear word in front can harden it.
- 5A ring-shaped hair accessory used to shape the hair into a bun.
Spread your hair evenly over the doughnut, then pin the bun in place.
Ballet teachers often recommend hair doughnuts for a neat, tight bun.
- 6A ring-shaped cushion for sitting on, used mainly by people with haemorrhoids.
The pharmacist suggested a foam doughnut to make the long drive more bearable.
He sat gingerly on his inflatable doughnut through the whole wedding.
- 7An informal name for the head office of GCHQ, the British government agency, in Cheltenham.
She went to work at the Doughnut straight after university and never talked about her job.
Thousands of staff pass through the Doughnut's gates every morning.
UsageWritten the Doughnut, with a capital D: people work at the Doughnut.
Note
The nickname comes from the building's shape, a huge ring of offices whose corridors curve all the way round, and it appears in British speech and journalism as well as in GCHQ's own publications.
- 8A spare tyre for a car that is smaller than a normal one, usually carried in the boot and fitted only as a temporary measure.
Don't drive on the doughnut any further than you have to.
Many new cars come with a doughnut instead of a full-sized spare.
- 9A life raft in the form of a round ring.
The crew threw a doughnut life raft over the side the moment the engine caught fire.
Two survivors clung to a doughnut life raft until the lifeboat reached them.
- 10To surround someone or something, especially by clustering round a speaker to make them appear well supported.
Loyal MPs doughnut the minister whenever the cameras are on.
As he spoke, he was doughnutted by a crowd of cheering supporters.
UsageOften passive (doughnutted by supporters) or with around. Spelled doughnutted or doughnuted.
Similarsurround, encircle, ring
Note
In British politics the verb names a Commons habit: members gather round a colleague who is speaking, so that the speaker is framed by friendly faces.
- 11The female external genitals, and from that, a woman's virginity.
Make my jelly roll with your doughnut hole.
2008, Diana Skylar, SeductionGirl, now you've reached puberty Your doughnut should cover itself With curly hair, with soft hair.
1997, Josiane Racine, VirammaNote
Bawdy talk uses it two ways: a man has designs on a woman's doughnut, or a girl loses her doughnut, where the meaning slides from the body to virginity. It is coarse, at home in crude jokes and sexual banter, and it can give offence anywhere a plain word would be expected.
- 12A swollen anus whose outer edge forms a ring; by extension, any anus.
Note
Like the vulgar word for the vulva, it borrows the ring shape of the cake, here for the ring of the anus. It is used for laughs or for shock, in banter and crude humour, and it is never the word to use with a doctor or in anything written for a general reader.
- 13A ring-shaped vacuum chamber, especially one used in a particle accelerator.
- 14In musicians' slang, a semibreve (whole note).
- 15A type of tyre fitted to the wheels of an aeroplane.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Made from dough and nut. The word turns up in American writing from the early 1800s; Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809) is one early example. Perhaps the name first described small balls of fried dough about the size of a nut, though it is more likely that nut is used in an older sense, a small round cake or biscuit.