Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun North America A deep-fried piece of dough or batter, commonly made in a toroidal or ellipsoidal shape, and mixed with various sweeteners and flavors, sometimes filled with jelly, custard or cream.
  • noun North America Anything in the shape of a torus
  • noun North America, automobile a peel-out or skid-mark in the shape of donut; a 360-degree skid.
  • noun North America A spare tire, smaller than a full sized tire and is only intended for temporary use.
  • noun A toroidal cushion typically used by hemorrhoid patients.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small ring-shaped friedcake

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Alteration of doughnut, from dough + nut.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word donut.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Actually, this one now appears in almost all English dictionaries, because after being bashed with it for five or six decades, the linguists have given up.

    December 15, 2007

  • You prefer doughnuts? In some parts of the world there still exist doughnuts, but policemen are devouring them mercilessly.

    December 15, 2007

  • I prefer doughnuts myself. They're much more doughy.

    December 17, 2007

  • But the proportion of nut to dough in doughnuts is lesser than that of nut to do in donuts. Is this acceptable? Are you less nutty than we believe?

    December 19, 2007

  • I hate nuts in my donuts. If the word had to be shortened, why cut out the good part? It should have been doughn. But it would probably annoy Misterpolly. ;-)

    December 19, 2007

  • Or don. Don you like it?

    December 19, 2007

  • Nah, then you're getting into the absurdly named doughnut hole.

    I'm just as nutty as you might imagine, bilby.

    December 19, 2007

  • What's wrong with doughnut holes? Much less fattening and quite inexpensive if you buy them wholesale.

    December 19, 2007

  • Again I say: not doughy enough. And what the heck is a "friedcake"?

    December 19, 2007

  • Is bilby suggesting that doughnut holes are holesome?

    February 17, 2011

  • In the Idaho of my childhood one could patronize a donut shop where those pastries were prepared with an addition of potato flour and were called "spudnuts". The shops were so named as well.

    February 17, 2011

  • "Donuts" gets 43 million Google hits to 12.6 million for "doughnuts." But subtract 12.8 million donuts for the brand name "Dunkin' Donuts" and probably millions more for "Buckeye Donuts," "Stan's Donuts," etc.

    "Doughnut" is still ahead on Google's Ngram viewer: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=doughnut%2Cdonut&year_start=1950&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

    September 12, 2011