doughy
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of doughy
Explanation
Something that's doughy is as squishy and soft as uncooked dough. If your cookies always come out a little doughy, you might not be baking them long enough. Some foods are deliberately doughy, like a very soft steamed dumpling or a delicious doughy doughnut. Others are doughy by accident, because they've been undercooked or made incorrectly. You can describe other things as doughy too, if they're cushiony — a kitten might purr as it kneads its mother's doughy belly, for example. Doughy comes from dough, with its Indo-European root meaning "smear" or "knead."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The mochi balls of doughy rice filled with ice-cream exploded on TikTok, but its apparent overnight success was more than a decade in the making.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
Inspired by xiao long bao, steamed Chinese soup dumplings from the Jiangsu province, TJ’s Steamed Pork & Ginger Soup Dumplings feature hot soup, pork and ginger encased in a doughy exterior.
From Salon ● Jan. 28, 2026
He often presents himself in close-up so his doughy features seem warmly welcoming.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2024
Even the doom-laden everything bagel that provides the film’s titular motif is redeemed, by the end, as a doughy symbol of wholeness, a poppy-seed circle of life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2023
The bakery stores obliged by baking up batches of soft doughy cookies which they gave away.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
Papo’s is part of a wave of new shops in Britain selling New York-style bagels, distinct for being bigger, doughier and more heavily seasoned than their London counterparts.
From New York Times ● Mar. 8, 2024
Think of it as a cross between orecchiette and gnocchi, as it's slightly doughier than many other rolled pastas.
From Salon ● Jan. 22, 2022
In the days since the retrieval, the effects of the withdrawal from the hormones are worse than the ones I had from the injections: I’m doughier than ever, exhausted, depressed.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 23, 2018
These different homemade mixtures exhibit different behaviors: a doughier slime will shrink back on itself, only fleetingly changed by the probe of a finger.
From The New Yorker ● May 17, 2017
But what about the brilliant millennial marketing team at the slightly doughier, self-proclaimed "third-largest," international pizza chain Papa John’s?
From The Verge ● Aug. 30, 2016
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
