Other forms: does
A doe is a female deer or rabbit. A doe and her fawn, a doe rabbit, does and bucks.
The male is a buck, and the young of a deer is a fawn. The pairing works for deer, rabbits, hares, goats and some antelope; for red deer, the words are hind and stag instead, which is a real distinction among people who work with them. Note doe-eyed, meaning having large gentle eyes; and doe as a homophone of dough and, in song, of the note doh.
1noundoeA female deer or rabbit.
“The doe stayed at the edge of the field for about an hour.”
doe is a female animal.
Old English da descends from a root about suckling — the same root as the word behind the Latin femina, a woman, which also means the one who suckles. The animal is named for feeding its young.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁(y)- — to suck (milk), to suckle
Proto-West Germanic
*daihā — female deer, mother deer
Old English
dā
Middle English
do — (female) fallow deer
English, today
doe
From Middle English do (“(female) fallow deer”), from Old English dā, from Proto-West Germanic daihā (“female deer, mother deer”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck (milk), to suckle”). Cognate with gmw-msc da, dae (“female fallow deer”), Danish då (“fallow deer”), Sanskrit धेनु (“cow, milk-cow”), Old English dēon (“to suckle”), Old English delu (“teat”). Related also to female, filial, fetus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire