Word of the Day

: November 11, 2017

doughty

adjective DOW-tee

What It Means

: marked by fearless resolution : valiant

doughty in Context

Noticing that the cashier shorted him a nickel, the doughty child marched up to the counter and demanded it from her.

"The early lighthouse keepers were a doughty lot, and had to be, insofar as their job wasn't merely to light the wick, but save the occasional ship that foundered…." — Verne Gay, Newsday, 26 May 2010

Did You Know?

Doughty is a persevering English word. In Old English, it shows up as dohtig, which was probably an alteration of dyhtig that resulted from the influence of the Old English 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.