Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Ling. Fr./Polari) a woman, often attractive.

1844		New Sprees of London 3: I’ll introduce you to the [...] flash and slang Mots, Donners, and Cullies that's faking the slums on the cross.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 59: Pipe this donna and swell paddling here. S’elp me squeese! – send I may live! – hang me high up! if it arn’t a Wild-street shickster.
1855		Yokel’s Preceptor 31: Donner, Woman, either Mot or not.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 47/2: ‘Fiela’ is a child; ‘Homa’ is a man; ‘Done’, a female.
1875		T. Frost Circus Life and Circus Celebrities 277: Dona (lady) is so constantly used that I have seldom heard a circus man mention a woman by any other term.
1879		London Life 5 July 3/2: ‘Hullo, here comes a “donah.” How are you, Miss?’.
1881		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 6 May 7/3: Your ‘doner’ may get clear, but the old beak [...] never lets off a tramp.
1882		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 1 Sept. 7/3: ‘Who’s that, George,’ whispered Polly. ‘That’s my “donor”’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Mar. 17/1: With him a spade was never called a spade, / A man or woman was a ‘bloke’ or ‘donah,’ / For all drinks fierier than lemonade / He was even as the whale that swallowed Jonah.
1887		‘Dagonet’ ‘A Plank Bed Ballad’ (in Referee 12 Feb.) n.p.: Oh, donnys and omees, what gives me the spur, – / Is, I’m told by a mug (he tells whoppers), / That I ought to have greased to have kept out of stir / The dukes of the narks and the coppers.
1887		J.W. Horsley Jottings from Jail 3: Donny (dona) for woman, and omee (uomo) for man.
1889		‘’Arry in Parry’ in Punch 29 June in P. Marks (2006) 93: Dark-eyed donas in shawl-patterned togs.
1890		Music Hall & Theatre Rev. 5 July 7/2: I saw how it tickled his marrow / To ogle the doners.
1891		‘’Arry on Wheels’ in Punch 7 May 217/2: Don’t I jest discumfuddle the donas, and bosh the old buffers as prowl / Along green country roads.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 55: He used to go to the toff carsies to shave and dress the swell’s hair and the toff donahs heads.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 28 Jan. 5/3: Never despoil an ostrich to adorn a donah.
1895		Belfast Wkly News 21 Dec. 3/2: Your bloke in the corner [...] is a mush-faker [...] but his doner [...] tells fortunes, and so he don’t work much’.
1897		Shaw letter inEllen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence (1932) Sept. n.p.: He shall be a west end gentleman and she an east end dona in an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers.
1898		J. Tabrar [perf. Vesta Victoria] Bid me good-bye forever 🎵 Think of the 'eart you've gone and broke / Of the donah you used to adore.
1899		J. Flynt Tramping with Tramps 130: These Whitechapel donners [girls] wants picter-like ones, ’n’ we don’t always get ’em.
1900		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘A Dangerous Dad’ Sporting Times 3 Feb. 1/4: The ‘’ome sweet’ wot I’d got together / With an eye to me splicin’ a donah I knowed.
1901		T. & G. LeBrunn [perf. Marie Lloyd] Come Along, Let’s Make Up 🎵 ‘Straight, you are a blooming “slap-up” little donah’.
1906		E. Dyson Fact’ry ’Ands vii: From the smallest prim office boy in the stationery warehouse below to the most frivolous ‘donah’ deftly manufacturing fruit bags in the higher flights.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 162/2: ‘That dona’s dotty,’ said Obadiah, as he gazed upon his half-a-dollar, and put it carefully away in his only kick; ‘and now for a jolly spree.’.
1910		Truth (Perth) 1 Oct. 4/7: Every ‘donah,’ every ‘tart’ / Knows the whole thing off by heart.
1914		Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 29: dony [...] A female member of the demi-monde.
c.1929		Charley Patton ‘Revenue Man Blues’ 🎵 Oh, a doney loves her saltwater, well, she always wants a drink.
1934		P. Allingham Cheapjack 190: Take sights. Screw th’ donah’s groinies.
1936		Robert Johnson ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’ 🎵 I don’t want no woman, wants every downtown man she meet / She’s a no good doney, they shouldn’t allow her on the street.
1940		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Apr. 7/6: Lesson 1: How to Collar a Chic. If the fowl is fly and doesn’t gum beat so sporty, try to drift to the donnie’s castle and skin-shake with the raisers.
1959		Elmore James ‘Dust My Broom’ 🎵 Man, she’s a no good doney, / they shouldn’t allow her on the street, yeah.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 181: Donnah An attractive woman.
1982		N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 104: Caricatures of larrikinesses (or ‘donahs’) of the 1890s–1900s period show the hats worn by them.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 44: Prize-fighting was a religion to larrikins, who would travel miles [...] to watch a bout, accompanied by their female donahs. This word is variously said to be derived from Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or the earliest European pidgin, Polari.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 291/2: dona, donner, donah, doner a woman.

2. a wife or girlfriend.

1888		Albert Chevalier ‘A Coster’s Courtship’ 🎵 I ’adn’t much myself, it ain’t exactly in my line, But wot I ’ad, I used, and now that coster donna’s mine!
1895		‘’Arry and the [...] Lady Cyclists’ Punch 15 June 285/1: ’Er as flower-mounts Clerkenwell way, an’ was donah to young Iky Crisp.
c.1895		A. Chevalier Before I Forget (1901) 232: If I buys cheap an’ sells dear, I’m a-goin’ to take the doner to the theatre to-night to see Nell Perry act – an’ she can act!
1908		A.N. Lyons Arthur’s 42: It’s the same to me, ye know, young man [...] whether you got a donah or whether you ain’t.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 306: dony, n. Girl, sweetheart. [...] My dony don’ wear no drawers,’ a line from a popular negro song.
1908		Sporting Times 15 Feb. 2/5: ’Erbert, a gentleman of the coster persuasion, and Em., his donah, have just been into the big pub to change their breaths.
1912		P.C. Wren Dew & Mildew 350: [He] addressed t [...] Sturling as ‘Donah,’ as his Sorcy Little Kipper, and eke as ‘ Kite’.
1912		‘R. Andom’ Neighbours of Mine 148: ’Arry, come and ’ave a look at Bill’s new donah!
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 138: Me an’ Emma was gettin’ that pally I kep’ callin’ her by my real donah’s name.
1917		DN IV 411: Doney... Sweetheart. Also doneygal.
1922		‘Off From Richmond’ in T.W. Talley Negro Folk Rhymes 15: I slips off from Mosser widout pass an’ warnin’ / Fer I mus’ see my Donie wharever she may stay.
1922		Wodehouse Clicking of Cuthbert 45: Never introduce your donah to a pal.
1945		(con. 1900s) S. O’Casey Drums Under the Windows 142: An hour ago today I and my donah celebrated our diamond wedding in the church of the twelve pathrons.
1947		J. Lomax Adventures of a Ballad Hunter n.p.: He also called the young woman he was courting, in the hope that she would consent to becoming his fourth wife, his ‘doney’ (donna, woman). Sometimes he made it ‘doney gal’.
1950		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 4 Sept. 5: The costers’ wives and sweethearts, called ‘donahs’, [...] wear wide-brimmed hats, adorned with ostrich feathers.

3. a landlady.

1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: The ‘donna’ [...] politely offered the gentlemen a drinking glass.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 404: Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure.

4. (UK Und.) the ‘lady’, the queen in a game of three-card monte.

1977

D. Powis Signs of Crime 181: Donnah [...] the queen in a pack of playing cards, particularly in the three-card trick.

5. (W.I.) an attractive woman.

1995

Francis-Jackson Official Dancehall Dict. 14: Donna general name for all look-able females.