do duty in English

Forms: does duty [present, singular, third-person], doing duty [participle, present], did duty [past], done duty [participle, past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|<does,,did,done>}} do duty (third-person singular simple present does duty, present participle doing duty, simple past did duty, past participle done duty)

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does duty",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing duty",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did duty",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done duty",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "<does,,did,done>"
      },
      "expansion": "do duty (third-person singular simple present does duty, present participle doing duty, simple past did duty, past participle done duty)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              15,
              23
            ]
          ],
          "text": "The old kettle did duty as a door-stop while we weren't brewing tea.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To serve, especially as a substitute for something else."
      ],
      "id": "en-do_duty-en-verb-64mGG40n",
      "links": [
        [
          "serve",
          "serve"
        ],
        [
          "substitute",
          "substitute"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "do one's duty"
        },
        {
          "word": "double duty"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "do duty"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does duty",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing duty",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did duty",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done duty",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "<does,,did,done>"
      },
      "expansion": "do duty (third-person singular simple present does duty, present participle doing duty, simple past did duty, past participle done duty)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "do one's duty"
    },
    {
      "word": "double duty"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              15,
              23
            ]
          ],
          "text": "The old kettle did duty as a door-stop while we weren't brewing tea.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To serve, especially as a substitute for something else."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "serve",
          "serve"
        ],
        [
          "substitute",
          "substitute"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "do duty"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-07-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-07-06 using wiktextract (e62056b and e7887d5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"do duty" meaning in English

Verb