doughnut

name

1. The head office of the GCHQ in Cheltenham, UK.

   “Former hackers as well as government suits roam the curved corridors of “the Doughnut”, as GCHQ’s base is known.”

noun

Etymology: From dough + nut, 1809 because originally small, nut-sized balls of fried dough, or, more likely, from nut in the earlier sense of "small rounded cake or cookie", with the toroidal shape becoming common in the twentieth century. First attested in Knickerbocker’s History of New York, by Washington Irving, 1809.

1. A deep-fried piece of dough or batter, usually mixed with various sweeteners and flavors, often made in a toroidal or ellipsoidal shape flattened sphere shape filled with jelly/jam, custard, or cream.

   “The soldiers, drawn up in hollow square—how apt is this word hollow, when applied to men who have fasted, in view of promised doughnuts!—received the procession, which consisted of music, then the ladies, then the doughnuts.”

   “One American student sought my help to take the work further in his school science project, in which he studied how doughnuts differ from cookies.”

2. Any object in the shape of a torus.

   “He put on the life jacket and began paddling around. A doughnut life raft popped up out of the ocean in front of him.”

3. Any object in the shape of a torus.

   “In about 1951, the same company sealed into their vacuum doughnuts the regenerative peelers so that X-ray beams or electron beams could be obtained with the sealed off commercial tubes used in […]”

4. Any object in the shape of a torus.
5. Any object in the shape of a torus.
6. Any object in the shape of a torus.

   “The advantage of the doughnuts was that they spread the weight of the aeroplane over a much larger area of ground, causing less damage to grass, and making them less prone to bogging down in wet conditions.”

7. Any object in the shape of a torus.

   “Place the hair doughnut/ring around your ponytail”

8. Any object in the shape of a torus.

   “When I was at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art . . . there was a lady student there — and I had designs on her doughnut”

   “My mother was sixteen when she lost her doughnut. Said she waited till she was legal. She was itching to do it she said.”

9. Any object in the shape of a torus.
10. A foolish or stupid person; an idiot.

    “Nice going, you doughnut!”

    “You fucking doughnut, of course you don't microwave a salad!”

11. A toroidal cushion typically used by hemorrhoid patients.
12. A whole note.

verb

Etymology: From dough + nut, 1809 because originally small, nut-sized balls of fried dough, or, more likely, from nut in the earlier sense of "small rounded cake or cookie", with the toroidal shape becoming common in the twentieth century. First attested in Knickerbocker’s History of New York, by Washington Irving, 1809.

1. To encircle something.

   “[…] even the notorious ‘doughnuting’ (gathering around the Member speaking) appears to have fallen out of fashion.”

   “My body flew like a rag doll as he relentlessly and with purpose kept doughnuting the car in wilder circles.”