Definition
nounA domestic animal, Equus asinus asinus, similar to a horse.
Sentence Examples
That is not a horse, but a donkey.
He insulted me by calling me a donkey.
Word Origin & History
The origin is uncertain. Originally a slang term from the late eighteenth century. Perhaps from Middle English *donekie (“a miniature dun horse”), a double diminutive of Middle English don, dun, dunne (a name for a dun horse), equivalent to modern English dun (“brownish grey colour”) + -ock (diminutive suffix) + -ie (diminutive suffix), or similarly formed from the given name Duncan. Compare Middle English donning (“a dun horse”), English dunnock. Became more common than the original term ass due to the latter's homophony and partial merger with arse (compare similar development between coney and rabbit).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Lost last Saturday between twenty and thirty shillings they that have found it please to leave it heare there is five shillings reward by Wm. Roberts that goeth with a Donkey with many thanks"
— 1776 August 24, “[untitled]”, in Ipswich Journal, Ipswich, Suffolk, page 1:
"DONKEY, donkey dick, a he, or jack ass, called donkey, perhaps from the Spanish, or don like gravity of that animal, entitled also the king of Spain's trumpeter"
— 1785, Anonymous [Francis Grose], A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, London: S. Hooper:
"I vow we must be near the place from where
The two converging slides, the avalanches,
On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.
We may as well see that and save the day.”
“Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?
'For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?[…]"
— 2013 November 17, Robert Frost, Delphi Collected Works of Robert Frost (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series), Delphi Classics, →ISBN, →OCLC:
"The chest may be found among those who stick to the sailing vessels, but for the steamer, the donkey died its natural death when the Suez Canal—responsible for many changes at sea—became an accomplished fact."
— 1903, W. H. Hood, The Blight of Insubordination, page 80: