doughnut
Pluraldoughnuts
US spellingdonut
Pluraldoughnuts
Formsdoughnuts, doughnutting, doughnutted
- 1A sweet fried cake, often shaped like a ring or a ball filled with jam or cream.
She had a sugary doughnut with her coffee.
We bought a bag of hot jam doughnuts at the seaside.
Note
- 2Anything in the shape of a fat ring with a hole through the centre.
The cat curled up into a furry doughnut on the bed.
From the plane, the little island looked like a green doughnut.
Similarring
Note
- 3A tight circle a driver makes by spinning a car round, or the round tyre marks it leaves.
He did a doughnut on the empty road and left black marks behind.
You can still see the doughnuts his tyres made on the frozen lake.
UsageSay do doughnuts: he did a doughnut in the car park.
Note
Less common meanings
- 4
- 5A ring you put around your hair to help you make a bun.
Before PE, she slipped a doughnut over her ponytail to make a neat bun.
I always lose my hair doughnut before dance class.
- 6A cushion shaped like a ring, often used by people with piles (a painful problem in the bottom).
After the operation, the nurse gave him a doughnut to sit on.
She took her doughnut to the office so she could sit at her desk without pain.
- 7An informal name for the main building of GCHQ, a British government office, in the town of Cheltenham.
Her dad works at the Doughnut in Cheltenham.
Security is very tight at the Doughnut.
UsageWrite the Doughnut, with a big D.
Note
- 8A small spare tyre, usually kept in the boot, that you only use for a short time.
After the puncture, Dad put the doughnut on and drove slowly home.
Make sure the doughnut in the boot still has air in it.
- 9A round raft in the shape of a ring, used to keep people safe in the water.
The sailors climbed into the doughnut life raft as the boat sank.
An orange doughnut life raft was floating near the rocks.
- 10
- 11A rude slang word for a woman's outer sex organs, or for her 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
- 12A rude slang word for the opening in a person's bottom, especially a swollen, ring-shaped one.
Note
- 13A ring-shaped container with all the air taken out of it, used in physics.
- 14A slang word musicians use for a semibreve, also called a whole note.
- 15A kind of tyre used on the wheels of a plane.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from dough + nut. It may first have meant small, nut-sized balls of fried dough, but more likely "nut" meant a small round cake.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Doughnut comes from dough + nut. en.wiktionary.org
- The word may originally have referred to small, nut-sized balls of fried dough. en.wiktionary.org
- The more likely explanation uses an earlier sense of nut meaning a small round cake. en.wiktionary.org