"D" Slang

doon aboot the moo

General

Depressed, glum, miserable. Literally 'down about the mouth' — the look of someone whose face has properly dropped. The Scots equivalent of 'down in the mouth' but with more weight to it.

doonhamer

General

Someone from Dumfries; also a nickname for the town's football fans.

doorwall

General

A sliding glass door — the big patio kind that's basically a wall of glass. Almost no one outside Michigan uses this word; cross the border into Ohio or Indiana and you'll get blank stares. Believed to come from a mid-century trade name a Michigan manufacturer slapped on the product.

doot

Internet

The noise made by the trumpet-playing skeleton meme — usually written as 'doot doot' in the caption. Comes from the 2010 webcomic 'Calcium' and exploded around Halloween 2016, becoming Reddit's annual October mascot. Now used as a general spooky-season greeting and to summon spooktober energy.

dope

Music

Excellent, outstanding, or of the highest quality, used as strong praise.

dortspeak

General

The exaggerated, drawled accent of well-off South Dublin — 'DART' (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) comes out as 'Dort', which is where the name comes from. Flattened vowels, upward inflections, lots of 'roysh' for 'right'. Mocked relentlessly by everyone outside D4 and immortalised by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.

dose

General

A person who's hard work. Whinging, draining, exhausting to be around — you've caught a 'dose' of them. Affectionate when it's family, cutting when it's not.

doss

General

To sleep, especially rough or in any spot you can grab — 'doss down' on a camp cot, in the back of the wagon, on the floor of the NAAFI. A 'doss bag' is a sleeping bag.

dosser

General

A lazy article. A work-dodger, a class-mitcher, someone who treats effort as optional. 'Dossing' = skiving, messing about instead of getting on with it.

dot

Gaming

An effect you slap on a target that drains their health in repeated ticks instead of one big hit. Stack a few and the enemy melts while you do something else.

dotish

General

Lacking sense; behaving in a doltish or absent-minded way. Also spelt dottish.

dotted line

General

An informal or secondary reporting relationship where someone influences but doesn't directly manage another.

dotted up

Street

Describing an inmate covered in tattoos.

dottie

Street

A shotgun. The spray of pellets leaves a pattern of dots — that's the etymology. Heavier piece in the drill arsenal, more associated with serious beef and older heads than the everyday handgun (leng).

double

General

A 12–16 hour stretch where you open for lunch, ride the lull, then go straight into dinner service. Standard survival mode in restaurants — picked up for the money, regretted by hour 10.

double blended

General

Modifier on a blended drink — run it through the blender a second time so the ice breaks down further and the texture goes silky-smooth instead of chunky. Adds 20 seconds to your wait and baristas quietly hate it during a rush.

double down

General

To increase effort or investment in a strategy, especially one already underway.

double flip

General

A flip trick in which the board completes two full rotations along its axis during a single ollie, such as a double kickflip.

double jack

General

The bigger brother of the single jack — usually 6 to 10 pounds on a short handle, swung with both hands. Comes from mining, where the 'double jack' team had one man holding the steel and another swinging. Today it's the go-to for driving stakes, busting concrete, and any masonry job where a full sledge is overkill but a hand hammer won't cut it.

double nickels

General

Two fives = double nickels = 55 mph. Specifically the hated national speed limit imposed in the US by the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, kept on the books until 1995. Truckers loathed it because it tanked their delivery times and revenue, and 'doing the double nickels' became code for crawling along under the federal limit just to avoid a ticket.

double overhead

General

A wave with a face about twice the height of a standing surfer, i.e. serious, powerful surf.

double peg

General

A grind or stall performed on both pegs on one side of the bike simultaneously, giving two contact points on the rail or ledge. It is one of the most stable and fundamental grinds.

double sawbuck

Internet

Slang for a $20 note — two sawbucks' worth.

double swing

Gaming

Two teammates swing out of cover together so a single defender can't shoot both. They either freeze deciding who to hit, or commit to one and the other trades instantly.

double up

General

When two waves combine to form a single bigger, more powerful wave, often heaving and hard to read.

double-digit midget

General

A service member with fewer than 100 days remaining on a deployment or enlistment, so the countdown fits in double digits.

double-double

General

Reaching ten or more in two of points, rebounds, assists, steals or blocks in a single game.

doubles

General

An iconic street snack of curried channa (chickpeas) sandwiched in two pieces of soft fried bara bread, with pepper and chutney.

doubloon

Street

A light aluminum coin stamped with a krewe's logo on one side and the parade theme on the other, tossed by float riders into the crowd. Invented by Rex in 1960 and copied by every krewe since. Step on one before you grab it — the locals' rule — or you'll get your fingers stomped.

douen

General

A folkloric child-spirit with backward-pointing feet and no face, said to lure children into the forest. Also dwen.

douga

Internet

The 'in-between' frames drawn between key frames (genga) to create fluid motion in animation.

dough

General

Used casually to talk about money in general.

dough-re-mi

Internet

Jocular slang for money, punning on the musical solfège 'do-re-mi.'

doughboy

General

A nickname for a US Army soldier, most strongly associated with the American infantry of World War I.

doughnut

General

Slang for the CT scanner, named for its ring-shaped gantry.

dougla

General

A person of mixed Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean heritage; more broadly, someone of mixed race.

doujin

Internet

Self-produced creative works — comics, games, music and more — made by individuals or circles independently of commercial publishers, driven by passion rather than profit.

doujinshi

Internet

Amateur, self-published comics — frequently parodies or fan works based on existing series, though original doujinshi also exist. Sold heavily at events like Comiket.

doux-doux

General

An affectionate name for a sweetheart or dear one, especially in a romantic context. Also spelt dou-dou.

down bad

Internet

An admission, often ironic, that one is deep in the red or otherwise doing badly.

down cellar

General

New England's stubborn refusal to add the word 'the.' Means 'down in the basement.' Where dad keeps the tools, where grandma keeps the canned tomatoes, where the oil tank hums all winter. Pronounced 'down sullah' — try saying it any other way and a Mainer will correct you.

down round

General

A startup raises new equity at a valuation lower than the previous round. Brutal optics, dilutes existing shareholders extra hard, and usually triggers anti-dilution ratchets that punish founders. The signal everyone was hiding from in 2021 became unavoidable in 2023-24.

down under

General

Australia and New Zealand, so called for lying in the southern hemisphere.

down-but-not-out

Gaming

The incapacitated near-death state you enter instead of dying outright in team battle royales. You're on the floor, crawling, bleeding out — a teammate can still revive you. Universally shortened to DBNO.

downdoot

Internet

A downvote, dressed up in the same baby-talk costume as updoot. Used ironically when you're punishing a comment but want to soften the blow — or when you're being sarcastic about how serious Reddit karma is.

downhill

General

Describes a ball-handler driving hard and fast toward the basket, building momentum 'downhill.'

downhill runner

General

A running back who attacks the line of scrimmage in a straight, forward, aggressive style rather than dancing side to side.

downrange

General

Away in a deployed or combat area; originally from firing-range direction toward the targets.