Word.ws English Dictionary

dout

dout is the obsolete spelling of doubt.

dout is the misspelling of doubt.

Meaning of doubt

Noun

doubt (countable and uncountable, plural doubts)

  1. Disbelief or uncertainty (about something); (countable) a particular instance of such disbelief or uncertainty.
    • There was some doubt as to who the child's real father was.
    Synonyms:
    incertitude
    Antonyms:
    belief, confidence, faith
  2. (countable, obsolete outside of India) A point of uncertainty, especially a yes/no or a multiple-choice question
    • Ma'am, I have a doubt about today's lecture
    Synonyms:
    disbelief
    Antonyms:
    belief, tenet
  3. (countable, non-native speakers' English) a question (that one has)

See all 8 meanings of doubt

Verb

dout (third-person singular simple present douts, present participle douting, simple past and past participle douted)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To put out; quench; extinguish; douse.
    • Mount them, and make inciſion in their Hides, / That their hot blood may ſpin in Engliſh eyes, / And doubt them with ſuperfluous courage : ha.1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • The fire she lit in every breast was fanned rather than douted by the rumour presently puffed abroad that she was the recipient of letters addressed in a man’s handwriting.1893, J. Keighley Snowden, “The Angel Barmaid”, in Tales of the Yorkshire Worlds, London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, page 136

Forms of dout

third-person singular presentdouts
present participledouting
past participledouted
pastdouted

Origin of dout

From Middle English doute (“doubt”). More at doubt.

Blend of do + out, from Middle English don ut (“do out”). Compare don, doff, dup.

Words that rhyme with dout

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dout

What does dout mean?
Dout means to put out; quench; extinguish; douse.
What is dout the obsolete spelling of?
Dout is the obsolete spelling of doubt.
What part of speech is dout?
Dout is a verb.
What is the past tense of dout?
The past tense of dout is douted.

Words near dout in the dictionary

  1. dousted
  2. dousting
  3. doustings
  4. Doustioni
  5. dousts
  6. dout
  7. doutar
  8. doutars
  9. douted
  10. douter
  11. douters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dout (page history and authors); doubt (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: “dout.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dout. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.