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...even dough...

...even dough...

...even dough...

(OP)
I have a co-worker that is from Nigeria.  I have noticed that he uses the phrase "even dough" a lot.  I had suspected this was only due to his heavy accent, and that he meant to say "even though".  I received an email where he used the term "even dough" so I asked him about it.

He thought "even dough" was a real term, derived from baking, that meant "things will be ok if X is done".

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: ...even dough...

MM;
Did you ever deal with the law firm;

Dewy, Cheetum and Howe?

Very real last names but placed together results in another meaning.

RE: ...even dough...

Maybe he just watched too many old gangster movies, e.g., "dese", "dose", "dem", "dat", "dough".


d-d-d-dat's all folks!!

TTFN

RE: ...even dough...

Perhaps one should reflect on the fact that, in the days before printing and dictionaries, English words and phrases evolved at an incredible rate precisely because of such misunderstandings. In those days that guy might have been on the cutting edge of a trend.

RE: ...even dough...

Not quite the same thing, but I have a friend who migrated to Australia from Italy about 30 years ago. He spoke very little English when he arrived, but has no problems now.

His salutation when sharing a round of drinks has always been "Formaggio!". We non-Italians had always assumed this was the Italian version of "Cheers!", Skoll!", "Salut!", etc, and thought nothing of it. A year or so ago, an Italian cousin of his visited Australia on holiday, and joined us at the bar. His cousin was puzzled as to the origin of his toast. My friend explained to his cousin that in Australia, it is customary to say "Cheese!" before downing one's drink.

For more than 20 years, he had never realised that we were actually saying "Cheers!", and none of us had ever realised he had been using a mis-translation all this time. Needless to say, the group of us have all adopted "Formaggio!" as our preferred toast (much to the embarrassment of my Italian friend) , and we are just waiting for the day when it really catches on, and we hear it from someone outside our little group.

RE: ...even dough...

That's a good story.  It could bring up a whole new category of words -- "Family Words" -- which make perfect sense to the family, but no one else.  

RE: ...even dough...

dough (do)
n.

...
Slang. Money.

Sounds like he's offering up a bet with even odds. I can almost hear this coming from a mob bookie in an old movie.

RE: ...even dough...

(OP)
I asked if he meant money when saying "even dough" and he said  it was not related to money, but rather like baked bread.  You want the bread dough to raise evenly while you are baking, and he thought that the term could be used to descibe a bad situation where things could be made to work out well.


Perhaps these types of words and phrases might best be described as "micro-colloquialisms"?

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: ...even dough...

Again, slightly off topic, but when I was in my teens in England, in the pre-Beatles era, we used to be deluged with American music - Britsh music was pretty lousy in those days. There was a song in the charts sung by Johnny Tillotson called Poetry in Motion. And there was a guy that I knew who thought the words were "Oh, a tree in motion". How he could possibly have been under this delusion I'll never know, since the succeeding words were "walking by my side" and were quite clearly enunciated by Tillotson. LSD came later - or at least I thought it did.

RE: ...even dough...

Oh - that's what you call them! Learn something every day. Although as usual I am going even further off topic, I remember once a recording of George Shearing's where between sets he remarks that you can generate hilarious song lyrics by substituting the word "lunch" for "love". Things like, "I'm in the mood for lunch", "Lunch me or leave me", "Lunch walked right in" etc. And the Doobie Brothers "Real Love" was completely ruined for me by a humorous English DJ who suggested one substitute "Veal Loaf" for "Real Love" - every time I hear it I mentally make the substitution .. "we'd trade it all right now for just one minute of veal loaf". And the way Michael McDonald pronounces it, it actually sounds like "veal loaf". So it is not at all surprising that non native English speakers get confused.

RE: ...even dough...

And then there's the Dolly Parton song....
'Donuts make your brown eyes blue'


And perhaps a not so incorrect use of another word...
In high school, I volunteered to help with a group of mentally disabled students in the high school dark room. One of the kids severely overexposed a piece of photographic paper such that the minute it hit the developer, it turned jet black. Very calmy, he moved the jet black print to the stop bath, and then as he put it in the last tray he confided to me that there was nothing to worry about. 'There', he said, 'that will fix it'.


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