doff
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "doff", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "doff" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "doff" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
doff is aEnglishverb. It means: To remove or take off (something worn on the body such as armour or clothing, or something carried). Pronounced /dɒf/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | doff |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dɒf/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #83,192 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for doff is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɒf/. Corpus data places it at rank #83,192 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for doff in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: PIE word *h₂epó The verb is derived from Late Middle English doffen (“to take off (clothing); to remove (headwear) as a sign of respect; to remove (grease) by skimming”), a contraction of Middle English do off, don off, from Old English dōn of, from dōn (“… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is doff, spelled D-O-F-F, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To remove or take off (something worn on the body such as armour or clothing, or something carried).
- 2To remove or take off (something worn on the body such as armour or clothing, or something carried).
- 3To undress (oneself); to divest, to strip.
- 4To cast aside or get rid of (something), to throw off.
- 5To remove (a bobbin or spindle which is full of spun yarn) from a spinning frame for replacement with an empty one.
- 6To remove (small pieces of cotton or other plant fibre, etc.) from a carding cylinder.
- 7To put off or turn away (someone) with an excuse, etc.
- 8To remove or tip a hat or other headwear in greeting or salutation, or as a mark of respect.
- 9Followed by with: to remove or take off something worn on the body, or something carried.
Etymology
PIE word *h₂epó The verb is derived from Late Middle English doffen (“to take off (clothing); to remove (headwear) as a sign of respect; to remove (grease) by skimming”), a contraction of Middle English do off, don off, from Old English dōn of, from dōn (“to do; to put; to take off, remove”) + of (“from; off”). Dōn is derived from Proto-West Germanic *dōn (“to do; to place, put”), from Proto-Germanic *dōną (“to do; to make; to place, put”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to do; to place, put”). By surface analysis, do + off. Compare don (by surface analysis, do + on), dout (do + out), dup (do + up). The noun is derived from the verb.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #83,192 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: