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doe

nounverbadverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//dəʊ//
  • United States//doʊ//

A female deer; also used of similar animals such as antelope (less commonly a goat, as nanny is also used).

noun

  1. 1

    A female deer; also used of similar animals such as antelope (less commonly a goat, as nanny is also used).

    A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them Across the wall, as near the wall as they. She saw them in their field, they her in hers.

    The city recently carried out a deer census, determining there are 313 stags (males), 798 does (females) and 214 fawns (babies) in Nara Park.

  2. 2

    A female fallow deer.

  3. 3

    A female rabbit or hare.

  4. 4

    A female squirrel.

  5. 5

    A female kangaroo.

Etymology

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 Middle Scots da, dae (“female fallow deer”), Danish då (“fallow deer”), Sanskrit धेनु (dhenú, “cow, milk-cow”), Old English dēon (“to suckle”), Old English delu (“teat”). Related also to female, filial, fetus.

verb

  1. 1

    Variant of doobsoleteObsolete spelling of do.

    As salutations, reverences, or conges, by which some doe often purchase the honour, (but wrongfully) to be humble, lowly, and courteous[…].

    […] a voyage to plant yͤ first colonie in yͤ Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in yͤ presence of God […]

adverb

  1. 1

    Variant of thoughPronunciation spelling of though.

Forms

plural
does
past tense
did, didde
past participle
done
present participle
doing, doth
third person singular
does
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).