[Ads-l] Doughboy - alternate explaination and implied antedating

[Peter Reitan]

"Doughboy" is associated with WWI, but it dates to at least 1846, as evidenced by a letter included in a collection of Mexican-American War letters published in 1990.


Monterrey is Ours, The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana 1845-1847, University Press of Kentucky, 1990, page 166. [Excerpt]  We were off at daylight, and the morning was mighty cold, so our pace was soon quickened almost to what is vulgarly called a dogtrot until we were stopped about eight o’clock at the foot of a large steep hill, where we “doughboys” had to wait for the artillery to get their carriages over. [End excerpt]


The term was used during the Civil War, where it referred to the infantry, as distinguised from the cavalry.  A reference from 1865 may suggest that the writer believed that the term derived from their walking on soft ground, although it is possible that it was merely a "clever" figurative turn of phrase playing off the word "dough", and not suggestive of the origin of the word:


>From Philadelphia Inquirer, April 3, 1865, page 8, from a letter from a correspondent covering the Army of the Potomac as it approached Richmond.


[Excerpt] The sacred soil of Virginia – so often have our marching columns been called to knead its saturated surface, that an infantryman is known as a “dough-boy” – if it is not sacred, morning, noon and night, sacred now and forever and sacred to all intents and purposes, it is simply because our soldiers are entirely too earnest in their anathemas to take time to swear in the polished Gallic tongue.

[End Excerpt]


A comment in a military history article published in 1868 suggests that "doughboy" was in use as early as 1808.


>From Army and Navy Journal, Volume 5, Number 46, July 4, 1868, page 727.


[Excerpt] Although the regiment of artillery raised under the law of 1808 was designated light artillery, it differed in no respect, in way of equipment, from the old regiment; both serving chiefly as red-legged infantry, a designation used in contradistinction to other infantry who were styled dough-boys.

[End Excerpt]


The use of "red legged infantry" used to distinguish the artillery from regular infantry from "doughboys" may support the explanation used in etymonline.com.  It lists the theory that "doughboy" refers to the look of buttons on an infantry uniform.  It would be a nice symmetry if both terms were based on uniform items - as was, apparently, "leatherneck" that refers to the leather collar worn by the marines.


An alternate idiomatic use of "doughboy" from the period may also be consistent with the button theory.  A few references show that sailors referred to the American flag as the "gridiron and doughboys", as a play on "stripes and stars."  "Doughboy" was the name of a water-boiled dumpling commonly eaten by sailors.  The "doughboys" standing out on the blue field of the flag would be similar to buttons standing out on blue uniforms.


Army soldiers also ate "doughboys" at times.  British soldiers ate something related to "doughboys" as early as the Napoleonic wars, at least in one particular location in Portugal.  Two separate memoirs of soldiers who served in the Peninsular War referred to a placed they nicknamed "Dough-boy Hill," for the horrible bread made from a dough of hand-ground "corn" (wheat?) they were forced to eat at the place.  It's not clear whether "dough-boy" here referred to the bread or to the boys making the dough.



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