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There’s no doubt that doughty has persevered in the English language—it’s traceable all the way back to the Old English word dohtig—but how to pronounce it? One might assume that doughty should be pronounced \DAW-tee\, paralleling similarly spelled words like bought and sought, or perhaps with a long o, as in dough. But the vowel sound in doughty is the same as in doubt, and in fact, over the centuries, doughty’s spelling was sometimes confused with that of the now obsolete word doubty (“full of doubt”), which could be the reason we have the pronunciation we use today. The homophonous dowdy (“having a dull or uninteresting appearance”) can also be a source of confusion; an easy way to remember the difference is that you can’t spell doughty without the letters in tough (“physically and emotionally strong”).
Synonyms
Examples of doughty in a Sentence
Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jan. 2024
And along with the doughty swarm of small organizations that keep New York’s music scene varied and vibrant, the Perelman Center makes its entrance as an opera presenter, staging one of the season’s two Huang Ruo works.
—Vulture, 5 Jan. 2024
The doughty American consumer led the way, with personal consumption growing 4% and contributing about 2.7 percentage points to overall growth.
—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 26 Oct. 2023
In the meantime, Ramaswamy managed to combine the MAGA-style purge of the federal workforce with the doughty libertarian ideal of subjecting the power of the federal government to a thorough evisceration.
—Ben Jacobs, The New Republic, 13 Sep. 2023
Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, was raised at storied Glamis Castle, a place of doughty stone walls and spiky grey turrets built at the turn of the 15th century.
—Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 8 Sep. 2022
This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal columnist took to the paper’s doughty op-ed page to sound off on George Santos, the human falsehood fountain who now serves New York’s 3rd congressional district.
—Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 28 Jan. 2023
Should the United States, a doughty republic oceans away from the carnage, feel a commitment to distant Kyiv?
—Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 28 June 2022
Despite the ministry’s nimble online work and doughty conventional fighting by Ukraine’s military, Russia's attacks have intensified, and some cities and towns have been captured by Russian forces.
—Wired, 17 Mar. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'doughty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Middle English, from Old English dohtig; akin to Old High German toug is useful, Greek teuchein to make
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above
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Dictionary Entries Near doughty
Cite this Entry
“Doughty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doughty. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.
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