Donning and doffing

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

I remember about ten years ago having a good laugh when seeing a statement on a package of vinyl gloves to the effect that they were designed for easy doffing.

Haha, (said I), that's obviously one of those bad translations from Chinese! No one really says "I'm done washing the dishes and now I'm going to doff these gloves"! How very archaic/poetic. The only thing that people doff is their hat, and usually now that's only in a figurative sense of expressing acknowledgement of another's superiority, often with a connotation of subservience. I could only think of someone whipping off those vinyl gloves with a flourish.

Well, the laugh is on me because I was WRONG (again).

My instincts were not completely amiss, because this is what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say about "doff":

In ordinary colloquial use in north of England (not in Scotland). Elsewhere, since 16th century, a literary word with an archaic flavour. John Ray [17th century dialect lexicographer] noted it as a northern provincialism; Samuel Johnson [1755], as ‘in all its senses obsolete, and scarcely used except by rustics’. In 19th cent., from the time of Scott, very frequent in literary use.

Good old Sir Walter Scott, to whom we owe the revival of many archaisms.

But, as we have all come to know much more about the protective gear that hospital workers and others wear (how many of us had even heard the initialism PPE a mere month ago?), we have learned that in the medical field the word "doff", and its opposite "don" are very common indeed. 

What is the origin of these words? As soon as I tell you, you will think, "Well that's so obvious!" but it may not have occurred to you before.

They can both be traced back to Anglo-Saxon, where "do on" and "do off" were phrasal verbs meaning "put on" and "take off" (clothing). Over the years these phrasal verbs got smooshed together until we ended up with "don" and "doff". 

As to all those medical staff and  other essential workers who are busily donning and doffing all day long, I can only doff my hat to them.