doughty

****************************************************************
Happy New Edition! Ring in more than 10,000 new words
and meanings with the latest Collegiate Dictionary!
http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/info/eleventh.htm
****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for January 8 is: 

doughty   \DOW-tee ("OW" as in "cow")\   adjective 
     : marked by fearless resolution : valiant 

Example sentence: 
     "Guy ... is a doughty Swiss immigrant who insists the only 
cure for illness is fifteen minutes of violent gymnastics 
followed by a freezing shower." (Tad Friend, _Vogue_, January 
1991) 

Did you know? 
     "Doughty" is a persevering Old English word. Its earliest 
form was "dyhtig," but early on, the vowel changed, and the 
word became "dohtig." That was probably due to influence from a 
related Old English word, "dohte," that meant "had worth." By 
the 13th century, the spelling "doughty" had begun to appear. 
The expected pronunciation would be \DAW-tee\, paralleling 
other similarly spelled old words like "bought" and "sought." 
But over the centuries, the spelling was sometimes confused 
with that of the now obsolete word "doubty" (full of doubt), 
and thus, so it is conjectured, we have the pronunciation we 
use today.