Primarily a dough-cake baked for sailors; then a brass button of similar shape, worn by the infantry; lastly, a foot soldier.
1685. Ringrose, ‘Bucaniers of America.’ (N.E.D.)
1697. Dampier’s ‘Voyages.’ (N.E.D.)
1867. Wasn’t I glad I was not a doughboy.—Letter of General Custer, March 28. (Note.) A “doughboy” is a small, round doughnut served to sailors on shipboard, generally with hash. Early in the Civil War the term was applied to the large globular brass buttons of the infantry uniform, from which it passed, by natural transition, to the infantrymen themselves.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 516 (1888).
1867. She was so accustomed to fast riding with our cavalry, she does not know how to treat a dough-boy.—Letter of Mrs. Custer, March: id., p. 532.
