"D" Word Origins

donzel

Origin

From Old French danzel and Italian donzello, both ultimately from Medieval Latin domicellus (“young nobleman, squire”), a diminutive of Latin dominus (“master, lord”). Compare donzella.

doo

Origin · 1950

A 1950s bit of baby talk, probably a shortened, softened form of "doo-doo."

doobie

Origin

Origin uncertain; the slang term is simply formed from "doob" plus the informal "-ie" ending.

dood

Origin

Back-formation from dudhwallah, doodwallah (“milk-man”, literally “milk-ward”), reinterpreting the wallah of milk as a wallah of camels by dint of misremembrance of the Bengali word for “camel” which is উট (uṭ).

doodad

Origin

Unknown; attested since the 1880s. Compare earlier daud (“a piece of something”), later doohickey (“a thing (whose name one cannot recall)”), dialectal dad, dadge (“a large piece, chunk”).

doodle

German · 1930

Originally a dialect word meaning "fool" or "simpleton," from a Low German word for someone who plays the bagpipes badly; the modern "aimless sketching" sense only emerged in the 1930s, likely influenced by "dawdle."

doodlebug

Origin

From doodle + bug.

doody

Origin

A playful respelling of "duty," probably blended with the sound of "doo-doo."

doof

Origin

Onomatopoeic, from the sound of an electronic bass drum.

doofer

Origin

Respelling of “do for”, as in “it will do for that job”.

doofoid

Origin

From doof + -oid.

doofus

Origin · 1920

Probably an alteration of the 1920s slang word "goofus," shaped by a Scots word meaning "simpleton."

doog

Origin

Variant of Doug

Doogie

Origin

Variant of Dougie

doohickey

Origin

First attested 1914, of uncertain origin, probably from doodad + hickey.

dookie

Origin

Traced by some to Scots dialect words for "duck" or "dunk," originally used jokingly of Baptists who dunk people underwater during baptism.

doolally

Origin

From doolally tap (“camp fever; (by extension) eccentricity; madness”), with doolally interpreted as an adjective. Doolally is derived from the Deolali transit camp, a former British army camp about 100 miles (160 kilometres) northeast of Bombay, India, used as a transit station for soldiers awaiting transport back to Britain; while tap (“Indian malarial fever”) is from Persian or Urdu تب (tab, “malarial fever”), ultimately from Sanskrit ताप (tāpa, “fever; heat; pain, torment”).

Dooley

Irish

Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Dubhlaoich ("descendant of Dubhlaoch"), from dubh ("black") + laoch ("hero").

Doolittle

Origin

From do + little, originally a nickname for an idler.

doom

Old English

From Old English dom, meaning "judgment" — the same root survives in the legal sense of "deem" and originally referred to a court's ruling before it narrowed to mean a grim fate.

doomsday

Old English

From Old English dom ("judgment") plus dæg ("day") — literally "judgment day."

doomsman

Origin

From Middle English domesman, equivalent to doom + -s- + man.

doon

Origin

A Scots dialect variant of the English word "down."

door

Old English

From Old English duru, an ancient word going back to a Proto-Indo-European root for "doorway" shared across most European and many Asian languages.

doorbell

Origin

A straightforward compound of "door" and "bell."

doorkeeper

Origin

Compound of door + keeper.

doorknob

Origin

A compound of "door" and "knob."

doorknocker

Origin

From door + knocker.

doorman

Origin

A compound of "door" and "man."

doormat

Origin

A compound of "door" and "mat."

doornail

Origin

A compound of "door" and "nail," mostly remembered today through the phrase "dead as a doornail."

doorpost

Origin

From door + post.

doorsill

Origin

From door + sill.

doorstep

Origin

A compound of "door" and "step."

doorstop

Origin

From door + stop.

doorway

Origin

A compound of "door" and "way."

doot

Cantonese

The Scots sense is a dialect form of "doubt"; the electronic-beep sense is imitative, mimicking the tone a scanner makes, and later spread through Cantonese-influenced transit slang (from 嘟, dut¹).

doozy

Italian · 1903

Origin unclear; first recorded in 1903, possibly linked to "daisy" (once used to mean something excellent) or the Italian actress Eleonora Duse. The car brand Duesenberg is a popular but false origin story — the word predates it.

dopamine

Origin

Formed from "DOPA" (short for dihydroxyphenylalanine, a related chemical) plus the chemical suffix "-amine."

dope

Dutch · 1900

From Dutch doop, a thick dipping sauce, related to a verb meaning "to dip." The drug sense grew from thick, sticky opium paste; the "cool" slang sense is a later 20th-century development.

dopey

Origin

From "dope" (in its "stupid person" sense) plus the adjective ending "-y."

doping

Origin

From dope + -ing.

doppelganger

German

Borrowed directly from German Doppelgänger, literally "double-walker."

Doppler

Origin · 1842

From the surname of Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who first described the effect in 1842.

dor

Old English

From Old English dora ("humming insect"), related to the word "drone," which also originally meant a buzzing insect.

Dora

Ancient Greek · 1800

A diminutive of Dorothy in use since the early 1800s, from Ancient Greek doron, "gift."

Dorado

Latin

From Italian dorato ("gilded, golden"), ultimately from Latin deaurare, "to gild" — a reference to the fish's shimmering color.

Doran

Irish

Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Deoradháin, from deoradh ("pilgrim, exile, stranger").