dough

American  

[doh] / doʊ /

noun

• doughs
  plural

1. flour or meal combined with water, milk, etc., in a mass for baking into bread, cake, etc.; paste of bread.

2. any similar soft, pasty mass.

3. Slang. money.

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dough British  

/ dəʊ /

noun

1. a thick mixture of flour or meal and water or milk, used for making bread, pastry, etc

2. any similar pasty mass

3. a slang word for money

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• doughlike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• doughs
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of dough

before 1000; Middle English do ( u ) gh, do ( u ) h, dou ( e ), Old English dāg, dāh; cognate with Dutch deeg, Old Norse deig, Gothic daigs, German Teig

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Explanation

Dough is a thick mixture of flour and other ingredients that can be kneaded, baked, and eaten. Bread dough needs to rise before you bake it in a hot oven. Many baked goods begin their lives as dough, including bread, rolls, and some cookies. Dough is stiff enough that you can shape it, pull pieces off of it, stretch it and knead it. Informally, dough can also mean "money." If your friend says, "I make so much dough waiting tables!" he probably means money, not cookie dough. The word comes from an Indo-European root that means "smear" or "knead."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dough doughs

The gluten-free mixture was too sticky to pass through the rollers that flatten the dough into sheets.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2026

Constantly choosing restaurants that cost $300 a person is tone-deaf, but only if you have communicated that you are not comfortable spending that kind of dough on eating out.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 23, 2026

Regular diners can progress through a bronze, silver and gold system unlocking perks from free dough balls to hot and soft drinks on the house.

From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026

All the introverted Tucker had to do was be his normal self with the understanding that no one expected him to live up to that Ohtani-type contract, that Juan Soto-esque dough, that Aaron Judge-level cheddar.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2026

The strands started separately, and wove together, but as they spent time twined together, the dough merged.

From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack

You also need time: Almost all doughs in the book require at least an overnight fermentation to improve their flavor, rise and handling capability.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

But if you want a Moto pizza bad enough, go right when the doors open at 4 p.m. because the crew sets aside a few extra doughs for walk-ins.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 4, 2023

We can flavor doughs that we might normally think of as sweeter, or even just, they might not actually have any sugar in them, but we might equate them with desserts.

From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2022

If you have storage space, you can make most cookie doughs and refrigerate or even freeze them.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 5, 2022

Grizzled old-timers of Forty Mile and Circle City, sour doughs with leathern jaws and bean-calloused stomachs, called up dream memories of chickens and green things at mention of his name. 

From The Faith of Men by Jack London

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