doe » dough

Chiefly in:   dough-eyed

Classification: English

Spotted in the wild:

  • Picture this: a portly, dough-eyed, flaxen-haired lad making his screen debut in the horrific 1989 remake of “Lord of the Flies”. (espn.com sports, (cached) March 8, 2005)
  • Do you know what it’s like to be shy? To’ve been told that when you’re shy you miss out? And to’ve been told there are plenty of people my age who are not innocent and that I’m innocent, very dough-eyed. (Personal journal, May 12, 2007)
  • Gordon Brown is very dough eyed when it comes to family……..and the system reflects that. (Stormfront forum, April 10, 2006)

Analyzed or reported by:

This reshaping was first posted briefly in the an Eggcorn forum post by Lisa in April 2007 and then fully documented and discussed 5 months later. The thread that developed contains some speculation (and bafflement) about the underlying image.

I imagine that if the animal reference _doe_ remains obscure and is replaced with _dough_ the idea might well be that of indistinct and not-yet-fully-formed softness, fitting with categories such as innocence and naivete.

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2008/08/25 |

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