Doughnut or donut? Does the spelling really matter, or should we just glaze over the difference? The name of these treats is just one of the many weird discrepancies about doughnuts, and there are certainly more to cover (like why is there a hole in the center? ), but we have to dissect the mystery of doughnuts one at a time and start with finding out how this treat is spelled.
Generally, we can rely on good old spell check to assure us if we’ve made an egregious spelling error, but type doughnut or donut, and no red squiggly line appears, what gives?
Snooping around Merriam-Webster, you’ll see that their consensus is divided. If we want to split hairs, doughnut is the original spelling and dates back to the 1700s, with documentation of the spelling appearing in England and traveling across the Atlantic. The newer, shorter spelling was more recent and started appearing during the mid-20th century.
This 20th-century spelling doesn’t directly correlate to famous doughnut chains, instead, the spelling comes down to cost and finances. During the mid-20th-century, the use of plastic-based signboards, neon lights, and metal signs constricted how many letters you could fit on an advertisement board. Sure, you could spend more money on more words, but most business owners didn’t see the point because the more words a business uses, the more expensive a sign would be. Donut was an easy and understandable shortening of a word.
The repeated use of the word donut wasn’t the only reason for Merriam-Webster to acknowledge donut as a correct spelling. Noah Webster, one of the founders of the dictionary, was an advocate for spelling reform, looking to simplify the complexities by making phonetic spellings. The Associated Press is one of the only major institutions to disregard the shortened donut spelling, so go ahead and use whichever version of the word as you please.
At the end of the day, the semantics of spelling doesn’t get in the way of ordering or baking up a delicious batch of doughnuts!