doff

英文词源

doff

doff: [14] Doff, don [14], and the now obsolete dout [16] and dup [16], contractions respectively of ‘do off, on, out, and up’, preserve the ancient meaning of do, ‘put, place’. They were standard Middle English forms, but gradually fell out of the mainstream language into dialect (from which dout and dup never emerged). Sir Walter Scott, however, included doff and don, in their specific sense ‘remove or put on clothing’, in his long list of medieval lexical revivals (‘My experience has been in donning steel gauntlets on mailed knights’, Fair Maid of Perth 1828), and they have survived as archaisms ever since.

doff (v.)

mid-14c., contraction of do off, preserving the original sense of do as "put." At the time of Johnson's Dictionary [1755] the word was "obsolete, and rarely used except by rustics," but it was saved from extinction (along with don) by Sir Walter Scott. Related: Doffed; doffing.