Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US milit.) a US soldier, orig. those serving in the Mexican War c.1847; subseq. replaced by boonie rat n., GI etc.

1835		Army and Navy Chronicle 27 Aug. n.p.: [T]he emblematic bugle horn of the Dough Boys is stamped on the flanks of each book.
1847		N. Dana Monterrey Is Ours! 166: We ‘doughboys’ had to wait for the artillery to get their carriages over.
1862		in R.G. Carter Four Brothers in Blue (1978) 19 Sept. 119: We do the fighting and leave dead cavalrymen for the ‘dough boys’ to pick up.
[1883		J. Keane On Blue Water 36: These ‘'water whelps,’ as we called them, are properly called ‘dough-boys,’ but our ‘grub-spoiler’ — pet name for ship’s cook — called them ‘swimmers,’ probably because they were such heavy sinkers].
1887		E. Custer Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 230: Hullo, there! joined the doe-boys, eh? How do you like hoofing it? [Ibid.] 516: A ‘doughboy’ is a small, round doughnut served to sailors on shipboard, generally with hash. Early in the Civil War the term was applied to the large globular brass buttons on the infantry uniform, from which it passed, by a natural transition, to the infantrymen themselves.
1899		K. Munroe Forward, March 21: That is a term common to ‘doughboys’.
1906		C. M’Govern ‘Soldier Sl.’ in Sarjint Larry an’ Frinds n.p.: doughboys:—Infantrymen.
1918		L.N. Smith Lingo of No Man’s Land 29: DOUGHBOY An infantryman, so called because infantry- men once rubbed their uniforms with pipe clay, and in the rain the clay made dough.
1919		H.C. Witwer Smile A Minute 14: He claims I have got to forget all about whatever friends I got in the company amongst the doughboys whilst on duty.
1926		(con. 1918) L. Nason Chevrons 205: They [...] found themselves confronted by half a dozen unshaven doughboys with fixed bayonets.
1932		(con. 1919) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 535: The heaving airless corridor of seasick seascared doughboys.
1937		J. Archibald ‘Crash on Delivery’ in Flying Aces Nov. 🌐 The doughs who stumbled over this treasure left the Heinie paymaster where they found him.
1944		J. Archibald ‘Meat Bawl’ in Popular Detective Aug. 🌐 Three emaciated doughs sitting in a slit trench without food or water.
1948		J.M. Cain Moth (1950) 343: He figured they might not like it to see her picture on every doughboy’s shoulder.
1958		(con. 1945) F. Davis Spearhead 61: Tell the doughs to hook up with third platoon.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 82: A G.I. or a Doughboy or the unknown Soldier.
1976		M. Braly False Starts 42: The tunic was the style worn by the doughboy.
1984		W. Diehl Hooligans (2003) 424: What happened out there, doughboy?
1992		Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore I 576: Under the erroneous notion that the American doughboys of World War I might want to sing Civil War ‘minstrel’ or music hall bawdy songs.
2009		J. Stahl Pain Killers 132: Bad as the Doughboy-era dope had made me feel, I already missed it.
2012		(con. 1954) ‘Jack Tunney’ Tomato Can Comeback [ebook] Run away while you can, doughboy — justlike you did at Chosin.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 201: ‘I talked to a doughboy from Newport News I know’.

2. (N.Z. prison) a mixed race person.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] : dough boy n. a P?keh?