Don and Doff

Two of the kids in our carpool are also in Maritza's class, so they were working on their vocabulary words together on the way home from school. Their teacher had defined donned as "dressed." However, when one of the kids read his sample sentence out loud ("The priest donned Charlemagne in a purple robe"), the usage didn't feel quite right. I explained that "put on" might be a better definition.

At that point it occurred to me that perhaps don had actually started out as put on and had gradually taken on a life of its own, complete with conjugations like donned and donning.

Maritza's prompt response to this suggestion was that if don were a shortened form of "put on," then perhaps "put off" had given us the word doff. Ah, a child after my own heart!

Of course we Googled it, and here's what Merriam-Webster says:  "don" and "doff" began as contractions, not of "put on" and "put off," but rather of "do on" and "do off" . . . two Middle English phrases that have fallen out of modern use.