doughnutting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of doughnut.

   Backbenchers spent the whole debate doughnutting the prime minister so the cameras never showed an empty seat behind her.

   Doughnutting a nervous witness with six reporters is no way to get a calm answer.

   Note

   The -ing form of the verb meaning "to encircle" works two ways. After be it is a participle (they were doughnutting the speaker), and on its own it is a gerund naming the act (doughnutting a witness rarely calms them). The t doubles before -ing. Do not confuse it with the fare-dodging noun. The spelling is the same, but that word names a trick with tickets, while this one takes an object being surrounded.

2. 2
   nounUKuncountable

   A way of dodging train fares by buying tickets that cover only the beginning and end of a journey, leaving the middle stretch unpaid.

   Commuters caught doughnutting on the busiest lines now face steep penalty fares.

   The rail company estimates that doughnutting costs it millions in lost revenue each year.

   Note

   The name is a picture of the ticket on a London Underground map: the paid-for stretches form a ring around an unpaid hole in the middle, like a doughnut. It is a British, uncountable word. People speak of doughnutting, or of a technique known as doughnutting, but never of a doughnutting. Dumbbelling names the same trick, and the term is sober enough for Carl Bro Group's FareXChange Scoping Study for the Department for Transport (2006).

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