Meanings
- nonstandardDunkin' Donuts, an American multinational coffee and doughnut company.
I don't care how /they/ spell it. I refuse to write anything other than Dunkin' Doughnuts.
[2015 June 20, @D_Aardvark, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 28 Oct 20255 more examples
Although she is president of Portia, the secretary of Players’ Club, a member of the Good Government Group, and secretary of her GOYA group at the Greek Orthodox Church, this energetic senior finds time to work at “Dunkin’ Doughnuts” in her spare time.
1957 December, “Have You Met?”, in Marjorie Howe, editor, The Radiator, volume LXXV, Somerville, Mass.: Somerville High School, →OCLC, page 17, column 1Dunkin’ Doughnuts on the Newburyport Turnpike reported Sunday that a worker at that establishment had suffered a bad fall.
1958 March 10, “Police Notes”, in Daily Evening Item, volume 161, number 76, Lynn, Mass., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 18, column 1I work at Dunkin^([sic]) and I always spell it Dunkin Doughnuts no matter what lol #DoughnutNotDonut
[2016 April 21, @HiredHelp, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 28 Oct 2025Phonetic-based spelling reform aside, let’s take a closer look at the doughnut chains: Dunkin’ Doughnuts and Mister Doughnut, two chains founded by brothers-in-law in the mid-1950s. The first Dunkin’ Doughnuts was opened in 1950, a revamp of William Rosenberg’s coffee-and-doughnut shop Open Kettle.
2017 June 3, Kate Taylor, “Dunkin' Doughnuts convinced America to spell 'doughnut' all wrong”, in Business Insider Australia, Sydney, N.S.W.: Allure Media, archived from the original on 02 Jun 2017Awesome, Dunkin^([sic]) Doughnuts is importing coffee drinks from Japan! Yeah I spelled doughnuts the right way.
2018 December 24, @tigheklory, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 28 Oct 2025
Origin
A respelling of the company’s name.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Dunkin' Doughnuts. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunkin'%20Doughnuts
“Dunkin' Doughnuts.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunkin'%20Doughnuts. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Dunkin' Doughnuts,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunkin'%20Doughnuts.
Source: Dunkin' Doughnuts on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.