Entry · catalog no. 6275

dough

/ /doʊ/ /DOH

noun · General American, with a especially strong second life in Black urban musical co · 1850s (general slang); 1

✓ Verified

Money — cash in hand, earnings, or wealth in general, used interchangeably with amounts small or large depending on context. Carries a workingman's weight to it: dough is money you've earned, hustled for, or are actively chasing, not money sitting untouched in an account. It shows up in phrases about need ('ain't got no dough'), abundance ('rolling in dough'), and devotion to the grind ('I love the dough').

“She kept two jobs going because the dough wasn't coming in fast enough on one.”

Origin & Attribution

The word's origin as money-slang is not African American in root — the earliest documented print use is from a Yale fraternity magazine in 1851, describing a member who hoped to get his society out of debt if he could 'get sufficient dough.'

1851

Earliest documented print use, in the Yale Tomahawk fraternity magazine

1930s-40s

Jazz and blues musicians fold 'dough' and 'bread' into gig-and-payday slang, cited alongside quotes from figures like Dizzy Gillespie in music trade press

1997

Notorious B.I.G. releases 'I Love the Dough,' cementing the word's place in mainstream hip-hop vocabulary

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

General American, with a especially strong second life in Black urban musical co · 1850s (general slang); 1

Spoken by

General American speakers broadly, but kept alive with special intensity by Black musicians and MCs — jazz and blues pla

$DOUGHThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

175 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

68/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1851

in the culture

Recorded here

2026

point of first record

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

1851, Yale Tomahawk: "provided he can get sufficient dough"

print/fraternity magazine

■

1952, DownBeat magazine quote referencing Dizzy Gillespie's use of 'bread' as 'basic synonym for loot'

music trade magazine

■

1997, Notorious B.I.G., "I Love the Dough"

song

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