2151: don and doff Nov 4, 2020

The verbs 'don' and 'doff' as ways to describe the wearing or disrobing of a piece of clothing may seem a little old fashioned or even formal, though in actual fact these used to be mostly literary. They actually derive from a contraction of 'do on' and 'do off' and show that an older use of 'do' in Middle English meant 'put'. These contractions were only regionally used outside of literary archaism until the 19th century when they were brought back into regular use, but by that point, the original sense was slightly less clear since 'do on' was not a normal phrase.