Other forms: doffing, doffed, doffs
To doff is to take off a hat or a garment. Doff your cap, doffed his hat, doff the coat.
It survives in doff your cap, which means to show deference and is usually said with irony now. Doffing a hat was a real courtesy for centuries. The word is a contraction of do off, and its opposite don is do on — two of the tidiest contractions in English.
1verbdoffTo take off a hat or a garment.
“The old man doffed his hat politely as the ladies walked past.”
doff is a taking off.
It is a worn-down squeeze of do and off: to doff your hat is literally to do it off — take it off — the way its twin don is do it on.
hooks ontodo
A contraction of do off. Don is the matching contraction of do on.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Middle English
doffen — to take off (clothing); to remove (headwear) as a sign of respect; to remove (grease) by skimming
English, today
doff
Built from
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#Verb (by surface analysis, do + on), dout (do + out), dup (do + up). The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire