Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

doff

Came across this* in a story I'm copy editing.
A 52-foot-tall replica of Bobby the Robot officially starts the event by doffing his top hat in a salute to this year’s theme, “Hats Off to Hanukkah.”

With well-guarded hope in my heart, I looked up "doffing." Alas, there's no way to interpret "doffing one's hat" as something dirty.
doff: 1. to take off; remove: doff one's clothes. 2. to tip or remove (one's hat) in salutation. 3. to put aside; discard. American Heritage Dictionary

And, once again, a robot lets me down.


*As always, I diguised the text a little.

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2 comments:

Joel said...

C'mon now, if you can't interpret that as something dirty, you're just not trying hard enough. Why, just the other day, some coworkers turned "shuffling some papers" into an unwholesome euphemism.

But we're guys and most guys I know don't mature past the age of 12. . .

June Casagrande said...

Hmmm. You have a point. And now I'm kinda feeling sorry for that poor hat.

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