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- Dictionarydoughboy/ˈdəʊbɔɪ/
noun
- 1. a boiled or deep-fried dumpling.
- 2. a United States infantryman, especially one in the First World War: informal US "some 70 local young men went off to serve their country as doughboys"
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American infantryman during World War I
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- Doughboy was a popular nickname for the American infantryman during World War I. Though the origins of the term are not certain, the nickname was still in use as of the early 1940s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughboy
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Doughboy was a popular nickname for the American infantryman during World War I. [1] Though the origins of the term are not certain, [2] the nickname was still in use as of the early 1940s.
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: World War I Documentaries
There are a number of theories, including ones that involve dust and clay.
The One Thing You Should Know About WWI
It’s unknown exactly how U.S. service members in World War I (1914-18) came to be dubbed doughboys—the term most typically was used to refer to troops deployed to Europe as part of the American Expeditionary Forces—but there are a variety of theories about the origins of the nickname.
According to one explanation, the term dates back to the Mexican War of 1846-48, when American infantrymen made long treks over dusty terrain, giving them the appearance of being covered in flour, or dough. As a variation of this account goes, the men were coated in the dust of adobe soil and as a result were called “adobes,” which morphed into “dobies” and, eventually, “doughboys.”
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However doughboy came into being, it was just one of the nicknames given to those who fought in the Great War. For example, “poilu” (“hairy one”) was a term for a French soldier, as a number of them had beards or mustaches, while a popular slang term for a British soldier was “Tommy,” an abbreviation of Tommy Atkins, a generic name (along the lines of John Doe) used on government forms.
America’s last World War I doughboy, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 in West Virginia at age 110. Buckles enlisted in the Army at age 16 in August 1917, four months after the U.S. entered the conflict, and drove military vehicles in France. One of 4.7 million Americans who served in the war, Buckles was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Today imagery of the doughboy persists in more than 100 World War I commemorative statues across the United States. Most of the statues were erected in the 1920s and often through the fundraising efforts of grassroots veteran and women’s groups. Even small communities were able to pay for the statues since versions of the doughboy statue were mass-produced and, therefore, more affordable.
Jennifer Wingate, associate professor of American Studies at St. Francis College and author of Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America's World War I Memorials, points out that communities were eager to hold up the doughboy as a heroic figure as the nation was anxious during this period over new outbreaks of Spanish influenza and over the rehabilitation of returning veterans. The early 1920s also marked the first Red Scare when, in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Americans were on high alert over Communist revolutionaries.
- Elizabeth Nix
- 3 min
doughboy, nickname popularly given to United States soldiers during World War I. The term was first used during the American Civil War when it was applied to the brass buttons on uniforms and thence to infantrymen.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn more about how the U.S. built a military machine. Indelibly tied to Americans, “Doughboys” became the most enduring nickname for the troops of General John Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces, who traversed the Atlantic to join war weary Alli.
Nov 16, 2023 · Doughboys was a common nickname for infantry soldiers through the Mexican-American and First World Wars. The term was used in wartime songs, including “Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland,” and an entire musical, “Johnny Doughboy,” which was released in 1942. A movie poster from 1942’s musical, Johnny Doughboy.
Aug 14, 2019 · The Doughboys of World War I. Robert Wilde is a historian who writes about European history. He is the author of the History in an Afternoon textbook series. 'Doughboys' was the nickname given to the American Expeditionary Force that took part in the later years of World War I.
Nov 20, 2023 · Doughboy is a slang word for an American soldier, particularly an infantryman, that is most often associated with the First World War, but the term is almost a hundred years older than that war, dating to at least 1835.
