Word of the Day

: September 18, 2011

doughty

adjective DOW-tee

What It Means

: marked by fearless resolution : valiant

doughty in Context

When little Liza saw the neighborhood bullies picking on one of the younger boys the doughty girl marched up to them and demanded that they stop at once.

"The [white bass](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white bass) particularly proved to be doughty hard fighters, especially when we hooked doubles -- which happened time and time again." -- From an article by Dick Martin in the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum (Ohio), August 8, 2011

Did You Know?

"Doughty" is a persevering Old English word. Its earliest form was "dyhtig," but early on the vowel changed and the word became "dohtig." That was probably due to influence from a related Old English word, "dohte," meaning "had worth." By the 13th century, the spelling "doughty" had begun to appear. The expected pronunciation would be \DAW-tee\, paralleling other similarly spelled old words like "bought" and "sought." But over the centuries, the spelling was sometimes confused with that of the now obsolete word "doubty," meaning "full of doubt," and thus, so it is conjectured, we have the pronunciation we use today.