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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
donkey
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
donkey jacket
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
jacket
▪ The man was wearing a donkey jacket and overalls.
▪ The man in the donkey jacket began to walk towards the back door.
work
▪ Some analysts express concern that the new systems will be less secure and incapable of doing donkey work like batch processing.
▪ Donkeys have no objection to donkey work, but they can not stand being taken for racehorses or tractors.
▪ This has its own 80188 processor on-board, so the cache relieves the main processor of some of the donkey work.
▪ Hence the donkey work is taken out of learning how to set everything up.
▪ One of the joys of the Atlas is the availability of mules to do the donkey work of load carrying.
■ VERB
ride
▪ Here are old buses with wooden bench seats, and farmers riding donkeys.
▪ They did not want to wait until the Messiah came riding on his donkey.
▪ In some parts of the world you may still see the male peasant riding his donkey as his wife walks alongside.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
talk the hind leg(s) off a donkey
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Police in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, yesterday confirmed the donkey was stolen.
▪ Shelter is essential - especially for donkeys.
▪ The donkey decided to go to Bremen, a town where everyone played music.
▪ The rugged terrain is inhabited by deer, antelopes and, locals say, wild donkeys.
▪ The students dissected donkeys rather than horses and even Coleman used donkey material to demonstrate horse muscles.
▪ When he made his rounds on a light-gray donkey, people bowed their heads and dared not look at his face.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Donkey

Donkey \Don"key\ (d[o^][ng]"k[y^]), n.; pl. Donkeys (d[o^][ng]"k[i^]z). [Prob. dun, in allusion to the color of the animal + a dim. termination.]

  1. An ass; or (less frequently) a mule.

  2. A stupid or obstinate fellow; an ass.

    Donkey engine, a small auxiliary engine not used for propelling, but for pumping water into the boilers, raising heavy weights, and like purposes.

    Donkey pump, a steam pump for feeding boilers, extinguishing fire, etc.; -- usually an auxiliary.

    Donkey's eye (Bot.), the large round seed of the Mucuna pruriens, a tropical leguminous plant.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
donkey

1785, originally slang, perhaps a diminutive from dun "dull gray-brown," the form perhaps influenced by monkey. Or possibly from a familiar form of Duncan (compare dobbin). The older English word was ass (n.1).

Wiktionary
donkey

n. 1 A domestic animal, (taxlink Equus africanus asinus subspecies noshow=1), similar to a horse. 2 A stubborn person. 3 A fool. 4 (context nautical English) A small auxiliary engine, also called ''donkey engine''. 5 (context poker slang English) A bad poker player.

WordNet
donkey
  1. n. the symbol of the Democratic Party; introduced in cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1874

  2. domestic beast of burden descended from the African wild ass; patient but stubborn [syn: domestic ass, Equus asinus]

Wikipedia
Donkey

The donkey or ass (Equus africanus asinus) is a domesticated member of the horse family, Equidae. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African wild ass, E. africanus. The donkey has been used as a working animal for at least 5000 years. There are more than 40 million donkeys in the world, mostly in underdeveloped countries, where they are used principally as draught or pack animals. Working donkeys are often associated with those living at or below subsistence levels. Small numbers of donkeys are kept for breeding or as pets in developed countries.

A male donkey or ass is called a jack, a female a jenny or jennet; a young donkey is a foal. Jack donkeys are often used to mate with female horses to produce mules; the biological "reciprocal" of a mule, from a stallion and jenny as its parents instead, is called a hinny.

Asses were first domesticated around 3000 BC, probably in Egypt or Mesopotamia, and have spread around the world. They continue to fill important roles in many places today. While domesticated species are increasing in numbers, the African wild ass and another relative, the onager, are endangered. As beasts of burden and companions, asses and donkeys have worked together with humans for millennia.

Donkey (Shrek)

Donkey is a fictional talking donkey created by William Steig and adapted by DreamWorks Animation for the Shrek franchise. The character is voiced by Eddie Murphy.

Donkey (film)

Donkey is a Croatian drama film directed by Antonio Nuić. It was released in 2009. It was successful at the Pula Film Festival.

Donkey (song)

"Donkey" is a song recorded by American country music artist Jerrod Niemann. It was released in May 2014 as the second single from his album High Noon. The song was written by David Tolliver, Kyle Jacobs, and Fred Wilhelm.

Donkey (disambiguation)

A donkey is an animal.

Donkey may also refer to:

  • DONKEY.BAS, a game created by Bill Gates to show off the capabilities of IBM's new PC
  • Donkey (Shrek), a character from the Shrek movies
  • Donkey (album), second album from Brazilian band Cansei De Ser Sexy
  • "Donkey" (song), by Jerrod Niemann
  • Donkey (film), a 2009 Croatian film
  • Donkeys (film), a 2010 Scottish film starring James Cosmo
  • The Donkey (fairy tale), collected by the Brothers Grimm
  • Donkey jacket, a short, buttoned outer coat
  • Nodding donkey, a pumpjack.
  • Steam donkey, a type of steam engine
  • Delph Donkey, nickname given to a train service between Oldham and Delph
  • Donkey Kong, a Nintendo video game character
  • in poker jargon, a bad player
Donkey (album)

Donkey is the second album of Brazilian electro/ rock band CSS, released on July 21, 2008. Seventeen songs were recorded at Trama Studios São Paulo, of which eleven appear on the album. Donkey follows their critically acclaimed debut album Cansei de Ser Sexy.

Three months before the release, bassist Iracema Trevisan left the band, being replaced by then-drummer Adriano Cintra. The new drummer is Englishman Jon Harper, formerly of The Cooper Temple Clause.

The album was released in Canada and the United States by label Sub Pop, in Europe by Warner Bros. Records, and Japan by KSR. In initial reviews of the album, critics noted a more polished approach to CSS' sound and production techniques.

The album was mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent.

Usage examples of "donkey".

For it was Arga, the farrier, who oversaw the hitching of the donkey cart in the gray-lit stableyard at dawn.

Then they had a wedding and after the wedding they went home and then they had some lunch and a drink and then they set off for Bethlem on their honeymoon and they went on a donkey.

As a bisexual, Pales was served by both priests and priestesses, usually dressed in big wooden donkey masks.

Two miles further on, at a fork in the road, he met a Bondel riding on a donkey.

Important Memo from The Desk of James Boulin Chartwell, III, to the effect that James Boulin Chartwell, III, suggested that George Jordan Graylin, Junior, stop riding a donkey and get on with discovering Who was Betraying The Great American Economy before All Was Lost.

It was long a standing joke that on one occasion, when her donkey and herself came down in a soft place, her royal highness, before she would allow her attendants to extricate her from the mud, bid them go to Madame de Noailles, and ask her what the rules of etiquette prescribed when a dauphiness of France failed to keep her seat upon a donkey.

No one but Wizard Derk can make a convincing human corpse out of a dead donkey.

Billy Barf, whose acquaintance with anything Italian was limited to the deuteragonist of Donkey Kong and a few canned-pasta commercials, insisted on speaking with his imperfect idea of an ethnic accent until Isaiah Two Four, detecting not only its inauthenticity but also its potential for insult, drew the young band eponym aside for a word or two, though Ralph Jr.

Nodding donkeys walked up the cliff stair carrying panniers filled with kelp and dulse, wrack, oar weed, and laver.

Ryan Galantine realize there was more to life than sports and Donkey Kong.

From the animal kindom have come symbols, such as the fox for cunning, the donkey for stupidity, the mule for stubbornness, and the jackal for trickery.

In the Via Larga the country people were dozing in their carts as the donkeys and oxen clop-clopped over the stones with their produce for the Old Market.

Oued Tolga, or some Sahara encampment, who crawled on foot, or rode decrepit donkeys, hoping to be cured of ailments by the magic power of the marabout, the power of the Baraka.

When we neared the village, a collection of mud walls like any other, we spied young Bindra squatting in the shade of an enormous peepultree, laying out twigs and branches for a fire, the donkey already freed of its load and chewing at a handful of leaves, the noisy little mynas already gathered in attendance.

Frascati and Tivoli she inflicted her good-humoured ponderosity on diminutive donkeys with a relish which seemed to prove that a passion for scenery, like all our passions, is capable of making the best of us pitiless.