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Eric (who's great, we hear) was wondering whether
it's "doughnuts" or "donuts." So I'll do my best to answer.
Doughnuts is clearly the original spelling. According to the wiki on the subject, it's the only spelling listed in Thorndike and Lorge's The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words.
I have no idea why that book is an authority. Usually, the Oxford English Dictionary is considered the be-all and end-all for words. But the British, well, they don't know from doughnuts, according to the Word Detective. He says it's a purely American treat, and the word's earliest known use was in Washington Irving's 1809 account of life in New York, when he described "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog fat." There were no holes in the original version.
In my opinion, "Donut" is no better than "Minit" or "Kwik" or "Kopy" - a dumb misspelling created for cute-itude. It seems to date from the 1950s, when Dunkin' Donuts first hit the scene. So, then, "doughnut" is correct, unless you're referring to the products of the double D.
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1-15-2006 @1:19PM Marc said... Another mystery about doughnuts is the origin of the pink box that most doughnut and pastry shops seem to use for large take out orders in the U.S.. I have searched a bit on the web and have not found an answer. What is the history of the pink box? Does it have symbolism or is it just one of those things that caught on?
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1-15-2006 @6:35PM Misha said... I always thought it was originally doughnaught - naught being an archaic term for zero, which makes sense to me, but doing a quick google it appears to be a very uncommon spelling, and Wikipedia and dictionary.com don't mention it
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