doughboys by barclay

The expression doughboy, though, was in wide circulation a century before the First World War in both Britain and America, albeit with some very different meanings. Horatio Nelson's sailors and Wellington's soldiers in Spain, for instance, were both familiar with fried flour dumplings called doughboys, the predecessor of the modern doughnut that both we and theDoughboys of World War I came to love. Because of the occasional contact of the two nation's armed force and transatlantic migration, it seems likely that this usage was known to the members of the U.S. Army by the early 19th century.