Word.ws English Dictionary

do duty

do duty verb: to serve, especially as a substitute for something else.

Verb

do duty (third-person singular simple present does duty, present participle doing duty, simple past did duty, past participle done duty)

  1. To serve, especially as a substitute for something else.
    • The old kettle did duty as a door-stop while we weren't brewing tea.

Forms of do duty

third-person singular presentdoes duty
present participledoing duty
pastdid duty
past participledone duty

Questions about do duty

What does do duty mean?
Do duty means to serve, especially as a substitute for something else.
What part of speech is do duty?
Do duty is a verb.
What is the past tense of do duty?
The past tense of do duty is did duty.

Words near do duty in the dictionary

  1. do credit
  2. do do
  3. do dos
  4. do down
  5. do drugs
  6. do duty
  7. do exactly what it says on the tin
  8. do fish swim
  9. do for
  10. do good
  11. do gooseberry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: do duty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “do duty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/do_duty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.