Douting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Putting out a flame or light so that it no longer burns or shines, an archaic usage
2. Snuffing out a candle, lamp or fire until it goes dark
3. Quenching a light or blaze, an old-fashioned term for extinguishing it

Etymology: "Douting" is the present participle of "dout," an older English verb meaning to extinguish a light or fire, the sense that survives in "snuff out" or "blow out." The verb has a tidy but surprising origin: it is a blend of "do" and "out," fused from Middle English "don ut," meaning "do out." In other words, to dout a candle was literally to do it out, the same way you might do away with something you no longer want. The verb also has a second life under a different ancestry. Separately, "dout" is treated as a form of "doubt," inherited from Middle English "doute," which was itself a variant of the word that gave us "doubt" in its modern sense. The two words came to look alike, and the older "dout" for extinguishing gradually lost ground to "put out" and similar phrases, leaving "douting" as a rare survivor of a once ordinary verb.